mm 



Blue-erass and 
Rhododendron 




Melissa. 



Blue-grass and 
Rhododendron 

Out-dpors in 
Old Kentucky 

By 

John Fox, Jr. 




Charles Scribner's Sons 
New York :::::::::: I 901 






THF LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESa 

Two Copies Rec^ivpo 

SEP, 21 #901 

^ CO(M«OHT Eirn»y 

SxLt ji. ;^o/ 

CLASS Q^XXa No. 
COPY A. 



Copyright, 1901, by 
Charles Scribner's Sons 



Published, October, 1901 



Trow Directory 

Printing <5r* Bookbinding Company 

New York 



To 

JOSHUA F. BULLITT 

HENRY CLAY McDOWELL 

HORACE ETHELBERT FOX 

THE 

FIRST THREE CAPTAINS 

OF 

THE GUARD 



Contents 

Page 

The Southern Mountaineer i 

The Kentucky Mountaineer 25 

Down the Kentucky on a Raft . . . . 55 

After Br'er Rabbit in the Blue-grass . . 77 

Through the Bad Bend loi 

Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 123 

To the Breaks of Sandy 149 

Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 177 

Civilizing the Cumberland 207 

Man-Hunting in the Pound 237 

The Red Fox of the Mountains . . . 257 
The Hanging of Talton Hall . . . .271 



List of Illustrations 



Melissa 



Fror.tispiece 



Page 



Interior of a Log-cabin on Brownie's Creek . 8 

"Gritting" Corn and Hand Corn-mill . .16 

Breaking Flax near the mouth of Brownie's Creek 22 
A Moonshine Still . . . . . .40 

Rockhouse Post-office and Store, Letcher County 48 
Ferrying at Jackson, Ky. . . . . -5^ 

Down goes her pursuer on top of her . . -94 

The rest of us sat on the two beds . . .106 

Calling ofF the Dogs . . . . -132 

Listening to the Music of the Dogs . . -136 

A Bit of Brush 142 

They took us for the advance-guard of a circus . 158 
Along roads scarce wide enough for one wagon . 162 
At the Breaks 168 

" Go it, Black Babe ! Go it, my White Chile ! " . 196 

ix 



List of Illustrations 

The Infant of the Guard .... 
" Hev you ever searched for a dead man ? " 
Going to Circuit Court .... 
Hall stood as motionless as the trunk of an oak 



Page 



The Southern Mountaineer 



The Southern Mountaineer 

IT was only a little while ago that the materialists 
declared that humanity was the product of he- 
redity and environment; that history lies not 
near but in Nature; and that, in consequence, man 
must take his head from the clouds and study himself 
with his feet where they belong, to the earth. Since 
then, mountains have taken on a new importance 
for the part they have played in the destiny of the race, 
for the reason that mountains have dammed the streams 
of humanity, have let them settle in the valleys and 
spread out over plains; or have sent them on long 
detours around. Wlien some unusual pressure has 
forced a current through some mountain-pass, the hills 
have cut it off from the main stream and have held 
it so stagnant, that, to change the figure, mountains 
may be said to have kept the records of human history 
somewhat as fossils hold the history of the earth. 

Arcadia held primitive the primitive inhabitants of 
Greece, who fled to its rough hills after the Dorian 

3 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

invasion. The Pyrenees kept unconquered and strik- 
ingly unchanged the Basques — sole remnants perhaps 
in western Europe of the aborigines who were swept 
away by the tides of Aryan immigration; just as the 
Kocky Mountains protect the American Indian in 
primitive barbarism and not wholly subdued to-day, 
and the Cumberland range keeps the Southern moun- 
taineer to the backwoods civilization of the revolution. 
The reason is plain. The mountain dweller lives apart 
from the world. The present is the past when it 
reaches him; and though past, is yet too far in the 
future to have any bearing on his established order of 
things. There is, in consequence, no incentive what- 
ever for him to change. An arrest of development fol- 
lows; so that once imprisoned, a civilization, with its 
dress, speech, religion, customs, ideas, may be caught 
like the shapes of lower life in stone, and may tell the 
human story of a century as the rocks tell the story 
of an age. For centuries the Highlander has had plaid 
and kilt; the peasant of Norway and the mountaineer 
of the German and Austrian Alps each a habit of his 
own; and every Swiss canton a distinctive dress. 
Mountains preserve the Gaelic tongue in which the 
scholar may yet read the refuge of Celt from Saxon, 
and in turn Saxon from the Norman-French, just as 
they keep alive remnants like the Rhaeto-Roman, the 

4 



The Southern Mountaineer 

Basque, and a number of Caucasian dialects. The Car- 
pathians protected Christianity against the Moors, and 
in Java the Brahman faith took refuge on the sides 
of the Volcano Gunung Lawa, and there outlived the 
ban of Buddha. 

So, in the log-cabin of the Southern mountaineer, 
in his household furnishings, in his homespun, his 
linsey, and, occasionally, in his hunting-shirt, his coon- 
skin cap and moccasins, one may summon up the garb 
and life of the pioneer ; in his religion, his politics, his 
moral code, his folk-songs, and his superstitions, one 
may bridge the waters back to the old country, and 
through his speech one may even touch the remote 
past of Chaucer. For to-day he is a distinct remnant of 
Colonial times — a distinct relic of an Anglo-Saxon past. 

It is odd to think that he was not discovered until 
the outbreak of the Civil War, although he was nearly 
a century old then, and it is really startling to realize 
that when one speaks of the Southern mountaineers, 
he speaks of nearly three millions of people who live 
in eight Southern States — Virginia and Alabama and 
the Southern States between — and occupy a region 
equal in area to the combined areas of Ohio and Penn- 
sylvania, as big, say, as the German Empire, and richer, 
perhaps, in timber and mineral deposits than any other 
region of similar extent in the world. This region was 

5 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

and is an unknown land. It has been aptly called 
" Appalachian America," and the work of discovery 
is yet going on. The American mountaineer was dis- 
covered, I say, at the beginning of the war, when the 
Confederate leaders were counting on the presumption 
that Mason and Dixon's Line was the dividing line 
between the North and South, and formed, therefore, 
the plan of marching an army from Wheeling, in West 
Virginia, to some point on the lakes, and thus dissever- 
ing the North at one blow. The plan seemed so feasible 
that it is said to have materially aided the sale of 
Confederate bonds in England, but when Captain Gar- 
nett, a West Point graduate, started to carry it out, 
he got no farther than Harper's Ferry. When he 
struck the mountains, he struck enemies who shot at 
his men from ambush, cut down bridges before him, 
carried the news of his march to the Federals, and 
Gamett himself fell with a bullet from a mountaineer's 
squirrel rifle at Harper's Ferry. Then the South began 
to realize what a long, lean, powerful arm of the 
Union it was that the Southern mountaineer stretched 
through its very vitals ; for that arm helped hold Ken- 
tucky in the Union by giving preponderance to the 
Union sympathizers in the Blue-grass ; it kept the East 
Tennesseans loyal to the man ; it made West Virginia, 
as the phrase goes, " secede from secession "; it drew 

6 



The Southern Mountaineer 

out a horde of one hundred thousand vohmteers, when 
Lincoln called for troops, depleting Jackson County, 
Ky., for instance, of every male under sixty years of 
age and over fifteen, and it raised a hostile barrier 
between the armies of the coast and the armies of the 
Mississippi. The North has never realized, perhaps, 
wdiat it owes for its victory to this non-slaveholding 
Southern mountaineer. 

The war over, he went back to his cove and his 
cabin, and but for the wealth of his hills and the pen 
of one Southern woman, the world would have for- 
gotten him again. Charles Egbert Craddock put him 
in the outer world of fiction, and in recent years rail- 
roads have been linking him with the outer world of 
fact. Religious and educational agencies have begun 
work on him; he has increased in political importance, 
and a few months ago he went down, hea\aly armed 
with pistol and Winchester — a thousand strong — to 
assert his political rights in the State capital of Ken- 
tucky. It was probably one of these mountaineers 
who killed William Goebel, and he no doubt thought 
himself as much justified as any other assassin who 
ever slew the man he thought a tyrant. Being a 
Unionist, because of the Revolution, a Republican, 
because of the Civil War, and having his antagonism 
aroused against the Blue-grass people, who, he believes, 

7 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

are trying to rob him of his liberties, he is now the 
pohtical factor with which the Anti-Goebel Demo- 
crats — in all ways the best element in the State — have 
imperilled the Democratic Party in Kentucky. Sooner 
or later, there will be an awakening in the mountainous 
parts of the seven other States; already the coal and 
iron of these regions are making many a Southern ear 
listen to the plea of protection; and some day the Na- 
tional Democratic Party will, like the Confederacy, 
find a subtle and powerful foe in the Southern moun- 
taineer and in the riches of his hills. 

In the march of civilization westward, the Southern 
mountaineer has been left in an isolation almost beyond 
belief. He was shut off by mountains that have 
blocked and still block the commerce of a century, and 
there for a century he has stayed. He has had no 
navigable rivers, no lakes, no coasts, few wagon-roads, 
and often no roads at all except the beds of streams. 
He has lived in the cabin in which his grandfather was 
born, and in life, habit, and thought he has been 
merely his grandfather bom over again. The first gen- 
eration after the Revolution had no schools and no 
churches. Both are rare and primitive to-day. To this 
day, few Southern mountaineers can read and write 
and cipher; few, indeed, can do more. They saw little 
of the newspapers, and were changeless in politics as 

8 



The Southern Mountaineer 

in everything else. They cared little for what was 
going on in the outside world, and indeed they heard 
nothing that did not shake the nation. To the average 
mountaineer, the earth was still llat and had four 
corners. It was the sun that girdled the earth, just 
as it did when Joshua told it to stand still, and pre- 
cisely for that reason. The stories of votes yet being 
cast for Andrew Jackson are but little exagger- 
ated. An old Tennessee mountaineer once told me 
about the discovery of America by Columbus, He 
could read his Bible, with marvellous interpretations 
of the same. He was the patriarch of his district, the 
philosopher. He had acquired the habit of delivering 
the facts of modern progress to his fellows, and it never 
occurred to him that a man of my youth might be 
acquainted with that rather well-known bit of history. 
I listened gravely, and he went on, by and by, to speak 
of the Mexican War as we would speak of the fighting 
in China; and when we got down to so recent and 
burning an issue as the late civil struggle, he dropped 
his voice to a whisper and hitched his chair across the 
fireplace and close to mine. 

" Some folks had other idees," he said, " but hit's 
my pussonal opinion that niggahs was the cause o' the 
war.'^ 

When I left his cabin, he followed me out to the 
fence, 

9 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

" Stranger," he said, " I'd nither you woiildn' say 
nothin' about whut I been tellin' ye." He had been 
a lone rebel in sympathy, and he feared violence at 
this late day for expressing his opinion too freely. This 
old man was a " citizen "; I was a " furriner " from 
the " settlements " — that is, the Blue-grass. Colum- 
bus was one of the " outlandish," a term that carried 
not only his idea of the parts hailed from but his 
personal opinion of Columbus. Living thus, his in- 
terest centred in himself, his family, his distant 
neighbor, his grist-mill, his country store, his county 
town; unaffected by other human influences; having 
no incentive to change, no wish for it, and remaining 
therefore unchanged, except where civilization during 
the last decade has pressed in upon him, the Southern 
mountaineer is thus practically the pioneer of the Revo- 
lution, the living ancestor of the Modern West. 

The national weapons of the pioneer — the axe and 
the rifle — are the Southern mountaineer's weapons to- 
day. He has still the same fight with Nature. His 
cabin was, and is yet, in many places, the cabin of the 
backwoodsman — of one room usually — sometimes two, 
connected by a covered porch, and built of unhewn 
logs, with a puncheon floor, clapboards for shingles, 
and wooden pin and auger-holes for nails. The crev- 
ices between the logs were filled with mud and stones 

lo 



The Southern Mountaineer 

when filled at all, and there were holes in the roof for 
the wind and the rain. Sometimes there was a window 
with a batten wooden shntter, sometimes no window 
at all. Over the door, across a pair of bnck antlers, 
lay the long, heavy, home-made rifle of the back- 
woodsman, sometimes even with a flint lock. One 
can yet find a crane swinging in a big stone fireplace, 
the spinning-wheel and the loom in actual nse; some- 
times the hominy block that the pioneers borrowed 
from the Indians, and a hand-mill for gTinding corn 
like the one, perhaps, from wdiicli one woman was 
taken and another left in biblical days. Until a decade 
and a half ago they had little money, and the medium 
of exchange was barter. They drink metheglin still, 
as well as moonshine. They marry early, and only 
last summer I saw a fifteen-year-old girl riding behind 
her father, to a log church, to be married. After the 
service her pillion was shifted to her young husband's 
horse, as was the pioneer custom, and she rode away 
behind him to her new home. There are still log- 
rollings, house-raisings, house-warmings, corn-shuck- 
ings, and quiltings. Sports are still the same — as they 
have been for a hundred years — wrestling, racing, 
jumping, and lifting barrels. Brutally savage fights 
are still common in which the combatants strike, kick, 
bite, and gouge until one is ready to cry " enough." 

II 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Even the backwoods bully, loud, coarse, profane, 
bantering — a dandy who wore long hair and em- 
broidered his hunting-shirt with porcupine-quills — is 
not quite dead. I saw one not long since, but he wore 
store clothes, a gorgeous red tie, a dazzling brass scarf- 
pin — in the bosom of his shirt. His hair was sandy, 
but his mustache was blackened jet. He had the air 
and smirk of a lady-killer, and in the butt of the 
huge pistol buckled around him was a large black 
bow — the badge of death and destruction to his ene- 
mies. Funerals are most simple. Sometimes the 
coffin is slung to poles and carried by four men. Wliile 
the begum has given place to hickory bark when a 
cradle is wanted, baskets and even fox-horns are still 
made of that material. 

Not only many remnants like these are left in the life 
of the mountaineer, but, occasionally, far up some 
creek, it was possible, as late as fifteen years ago, to 
come upon a ruddy, smooth-faced, big-framed old 
fellow, keen-eyed, taciturn, avoiding the main-trav- 
elled roads; a great hunter, calling his old squirrel 
rifle by some pet feminine name — who, with a coon- 
skin cap, the scalp in front, and a fringed hunting- 
shirt and moccasins, completed the perfect image of 
the pioneer as the books and tradition have lianded 
him down to us. 

12 



The Southern Mountaineer 

It is easy to go on back across the water to tlie 
Old Country, One finds still among tlie mountaineers 
tlie pioneer's belief in signs, omens, and the practice 
of witchcraft ; for whatever traits the pioneer brought 
over the sea, the Southern mountaineer has to-day. 
The rough-and-tumble fight of the Scotch and the 
English square stand-up and knock-down boxing- 
match were the mountaineer's ways of settling minor 
disputes — one or the other, according to agreement 
— until the war introduced musket and pistol. The 
imprint of Calvinism on his religious nature is yet 
plain, in spite of the sway of Methodism for nearly 
a century. He is the only man in the world whom 
the Catholic Church has made little or no effort to 
proselyte. Dislike of Episcopalianism is still strong 
among people who do not know, or pretend not to 
know, what the word means. 

" Any Episcopalians around here? " asked a clergy- 
man at a mountain cabin. " I don' know," said the 
old woman. " Jim's got the skins of a lot o' varmints 
up in the loft. Mebbe you can find one up thar." 

The Unionism of the mountaineer in the late war is 
in great part an inheritance from the intense American- 
ism of the backwoodsman, just as that Americanism 
came from the spirit of the Covenanters. His music is 
thus a trans- Atlantic remnant. In Harlan County, 

1.3 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Ky., a mountain girl leaned her chair against the wall 
of her cabin, put her large, bare feet on one of the 
rungs, and sang me an English ballad three hundred 
years old, and almost as long as it was ancient. She 
said she knew many others. In Perry County, where 
there are in the French-Eversole feud Mclntyres, Mc- 
Intoshes, McKnights, Combs, probably McCombs and 
Fitzpatricks, Scotch ballads are said to be sung mth 
Scotch accent, and an occasional copy of Burns is to 
be found. I have even run across the modern survival 
of the wandering minstrel — two blind fiddlers who 
went through the mountains making up " ballets " to 
celebrate the deeds of leaders in Kentucky feuds. One 
of the verses ran : 

The death of these two men 
Caused great trouble in our land, 
Caused men to say the bitter word, 
And take the parting hand. 

Nearly all songs and dance tunes are written in the 
so-called old Scotch scale, and, like negi-o music, they 
drop frequently into the relative minor; so that if 
there be any truth in the theory that negro music 
is merely the adaptation of Scotch and Irish folk- 
songs, and folk-dances, with the added stamp of 
the negro's peculiar temperament, then the music 

14 



The Southern Mountaineer 

adapted is to be heard in the mountains to-day as the 
negro heard it long ago. 

In his speech the mountaineer tenches a very re- 
mote past. Strictly speaking, he has no dialect. The 
mountaineer simply keeps in use old words and mean- 
ings that the valley people have ceased to use; but 
nowhere is this usage so sustained and consistent as 
to form a dialect. To waiters of mountain stories the 
temptation seems quite irresistible to use more peculiar 
words in one story than can be gathered from the 
people in a month. Still, unusual words are abundant. 
There are perhaps two hundred words, meanings, and 
pronunciations that in the mountaineer's speech go 
back unchanged to Chaucer. Some of the words are: 
afcerd, afore, axe, holp, crope, clomb, peert, beest 
(horse), cryke, eet (ate), farwel, fer (far), fool (foolish 
— " them fool-women " ), heepe, hit (it), I is, lepte, 
pore (poor), right (very), slyk, study (think), souple 
(supple), up (verb), " he up and done it," usen, yer 
for year, yond, instid, yit, etc. There are others which 
have English dialect authority: blather, doated, antic, 
dreen, brash, faze (now modern slang), fernent, fer- 
ninst, master, size, etc. Many of these words, of course, 
the upper classes use throughout the South. These, 
the young white master got from his negro play- 
mates, who took them from the lips of the poor whites. 

15 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

The double negative, always used by the old English, 
who seem to have resisted it no more than did 
the Greeks, is invariable with the mountaineer. With 
him a triple negative is common. A mountaineer had 
been shot. His friends came in to see him and kept 
urging him to revenge. A woman wanted them to 
stop. 

" Hit jes' raises the ambition in him and donH do 
no good noJiow." 

The " dialect " is not wholly deterioration, then. 
What we are often apt to regard as ignorance in the 
mountaineer is simply our own disuse. Unfortunately, 
the speech is a mixture of so many old English dialects 
that it is of little use in tracing the origin of the people 
who use it. 

Such has been the outward protective effect of 
mountains on the Southern mountaineer. As a human 
type he is of unusual interest. 

No mountain people are ever rich. Environment 
keeps mountaineers poor. The strength that comes 
from numbers and wealth is always wanting. Agri- 
culture is the sole stand-by, and agriculture distributes 
population, because arable soil is confined to bottom- 
lands and valleys. Farming on a mountain-side is not 
only arduous and unremunerative — it is sometimes 
dangerous. There is a well-authenticated case of a 

i6 



The Southern Mountaineer 

Kentucky mountaineer who fell out of liis own corn- 
field and broke bis neck. Still, tliougb fairly well- 
to-do in tbe valleys, tbe Southern mountaineer can 
be pathetically poor. A young preacher stopped at 
a cabin in Georgia to stay all night. His hostess, as 
a mark of unusual distinction, killed a chicken and 
dressed it in a pan. She rinsed the pan and made up her 
dough in it. She rinsed it again and went out and 
used it for a milk-pail. She came in, rinsed it again, 
and went to the spring and brought it back full of 
water. She filled up the glasses on the table and gave 
him the pan with the rest of the water in which 
to wash his hands. The woman was not a slattern ; it 
was the only utensil she had. 

This poverty of natural resources makes the moun- 
taineer's fight for life a hard one. At the same time 
it gives him vigor, hardihood, and endurance of body ; 
it saves him from the comforts and dainties that 
weaken; and it makes him a formidable competitor, 
when it forces him to come down into the plains, as it 
often does. For this poverty was at the bottom of the 
marauding instinct of the Pict and Scot, just as it 
is at the bottom of the migrating instinct that sends 
the Southern mountaineers west, in spite of a love for 
home that is a proverb with the Swiss, and is hardly 
less strong in the Southern mountaineer to-day. In- 

17 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

variably the Western wanderer comes home again. 
Time and again an effort was made to end a feud in 
the Kentucky mountains by sending the leaders away. 
They always came back. 

It is this poverty of arable land that further isolates 
the mountaineer in his loneliness. For he must live 
apart not only from the world, but from his neighbor. 
The result is an enforced self-reliance, and through 
that, the gradual growth of an individualism that has 
been " the strength, the weakness; the personal charm, 
the political stumbling-block; the ethical significance 
and the historical insignificance of the mountaineer the 
world over." It is this isolation, this individualism, 
that makes unity of action difiicult, public sentiment 
weak, and takes from the law the righting of private 
wrongs. It is this individualism that has been a rich 
mine for the writer of fiction. In the Southern moun- 
taineer, its most marked elements are religious feel- 
ing, hospitality, and pride. So far these last two traits 
have been lightly touched upon, for the reason that 
they appear only by contrast with a higher civilization 
that has begun to reach them only in the last few 
years. 

The latch-string hangs outside every cabin-door if 
the men-folks are at home, but you must shout " hello " 
always outside the fence. 

i8 



The Southern Mountaineer 

" We ims is pore," you will be tokl, " but y'u're 
welcome ef y'u kin put up with what we have." 

After a stay of a week at a mountain cabin, a younj^ 
" furriner " asked what his bill was. The old moun- 
taineer waved his hand. " A'othin'," he said, " 'cept 
come agin! " 

A belated traveller asked to stay all night at a cabin. 
The mountaineer answered that his wife was sick and 
they were " sorter out o' fixin's to eat, but he reckoned 
he mought step over to a neighbor's an borrer some." 
lie did step over and he was gone three hours. He 
brought back a little bag of meal, and tliey had corn- 
bread and potatoes for supper and for breakfast, cooked 
by the mountaineer. The stranger asked how far away 
his next neighbor lived. " A leetle the rise o' six miles 
I reckon," was the answer. 

"Which way?" 

" Oh, jes' over the mountain thar." 

He had stepped six miles over the mountain and 
back for that little bag of meal, and he would allow 
his guest to pay nothing next morning. 

I have slept with nine others in a single room. The 
host gave up his bed to two of our party, and he and 
his wife slept with the rest of us on the floor. He gave 
us supper, kept us all night, sent us away next morning 
with a parting draught of moonshine apple-jack, of 

19 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

his own brewing, by the way, and woukl suffer no one 
to pay a cent for his entertainment. That man was 
a desperado, an outlaw, a moonshiner, and was running 
from the sheriff at that very time. 

Two outlaw sons were supposed to be killed by offi- 
cers. I offered aid to the father to have them decently 
clothed and buried, but the old man, who was as bad 
as his sons, declined it with some dignity. They had 
enough left for that; and if not, why, he had. 

A woman whose husband was dead, who was sick to 
death herself, whose four children were almost starved, 
said, when she heard the " furriners " were talking 
about sending her to the poor-house, that she " would 
go out on her crutches and hoe corn fust " (and she 
did), and that " people who talked about sending her 
to the po'-house had better save their breath to make 
prayers with." 

It is a fact — in the Kentucky mountains at least — 
that the poor-houses are usually empty, and that it is 
considered a disgrace to a whole clan if one of its 
members is an inmate. It is the exception when a 
family is low and lazy enough to take a revenue from 
the State for an idiot child. I saw a boy once, astride 
a steer which he had bridled with a rope, barefooted, 
with his yellow hair sticking from his crownless hat, 
and in blubbering ecstasy over the fact that he was 

20 



The Southern Mountaineer 

no longer under the humiliation of accepting $75 a 
year from the State. He had proven his sanity by his 
answer to one question. 

" Do you work in the field? " asked the commis- 
sioner. 

" Well, ef I didn't," was the answer, " thar wouldn't 
be no work done." 

I have always feared, however, that there was an- 
other reason for his happiness than balm to his suf- 
fering pride. Relieved of the ban of idiocy, he had 
gained a privilege — unspeakably dear in the mountains 
— the privilege of matrimony. 

Like all mountain races, the Southern mountaineers 
are deeply religious. In some communities, religion 
is about the only form of recreation they have. They 
are for tlie most part Methodists and Baptists — some- 
times Ironsides feet-washing Baptists. They will walk, 
or ride when possible, eight or ten miles, and sit all 
day in a close, windowless log-cabin on the flat side 
of a slab supported by pegs, listening to the high- 
wrought, emotional, and, at times, unintelligible rant- 
ing of a mountain preacher, while the young men sit 
outside, whittling with their Barlows and huge jack- 
knives, and swapping horses and guns. 

'' If anybody wants to extribute anything to the ex- 
port of the gospels, hit will be gradually received." A 

21 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

possible remark of this sort will gauge the intelligence 
of the pastor. The cosmopolitanism of the congrega- 
tion can be guessed from the fact that certain ciders, 
filling a vacancy in their pulpit, once decided to " take 
that ar man Spurgeon if they could git him to come." 
It is hardly necessary to add that the " extribution 
to the export of the gospels " is very, very gradually 
received. 

Naturally, their religion is sternly orthodox and 
most literal. The infidel is unknown, and no moun- 
taineer is so bad as not to have a full share of religion 
deep down, though, as in his more civilized brother, 
it is not always apparent until death is at hand. In 
the famous Howard and Turner war, the last but one 
of the Turner brothers was shot by a Howard while he 
was drinking at a spring. He leaped to his feet and 
fell in a little creek, where, from behind a sycamore- 
root, he emptied his Winchester at his enemy, and be- 
tween the cracks of his gun he could be heard, half 
a mile away, praying aloud. 

The custom of holding funeral services for the dead 
annually, for several years after death, is common. I 
heard the fourth annual funeral sermon of a dead 
feud leader preached a few summers ago, and it was 
consoling to hear that even he had all the virtues that 
so few men seem to have in life, and so few to lack 

22 



/;/ 




t- 






R 



to 
cu 



The Southern Mountaineer 

when dead. But in spite of the universality of religious 
feeling and a surprising knowledge of the Bible, it 
is possible to find an ignorance that is almost incredible. 
■^The mountain evangelist, George O. Barnes, it is said, 
once stopped at a mountain cabin and told the story 
of the crucifixion as few other men can. When he was 
quite through, an old woman who had listened in ab- 
sorbed silence, asked: 

" Stranger, you say that that happened a long while 
ago?" 

"Yes," said Mr. Barnes; "almost two thousand 
years ago." 

"And they treated him that way when he'd come 
down fer notliin' on earth but to save 'em? " 

" Yes." 

The old woman was crying softly, and she put out 
her hand and laid it on his knee. 

" Well, stranger," she said, " let's hope that hit 
ain't so." 

She did not want to believe that humanity was 
capable of such ingratitude. Wliile ignorance of this 
kind is rare, and while we may find men who know 
the Bible from " kiver to kiver," it is not impossible 
to find children of shrewd native intelligence who have 
not heard of Christ and the Bible. ^ 

Now, whatever interest the Southern mountaineer 
23 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

has as a remnant of pioneer days, as a relic of an Anglo- 
Saxon past, and as a peculiar type that seems to be 
the invariable result of a mountain environment — the 
Kentucky mountaineer shares in a marked degiee. 
Moreover, he has an interest peculiarly his own; for 
I believe him to be as sharply distinct from his fellows, 
as the blue-grass Kentuckian is said to be from his. 



24 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

A 

THE Kentucky moimtaincers are practically 
valley people. There are the three forks of 
the Ciunbcrland, the three forks of the Ken- 
tucky, and the tributaries of Big Sandy — all with 
rich river-bottoms. It was natural that these lands 
should attract a better class of people than the average 
mountaineer. They did. There were many slave- 
holders among them— a fact that has never been 
mentioned, as far as I know, by anybody who has 
written about the mountaineer. The houses along 
these rivers are, as a rule, weather-boarded, and one 
will often find interior decorations, startling in color 
and puzzling in design, painted all over porch, wall, 
and ceiling. The people are better fed, better clothed, 
less lank in figure, more intelligent. They wear less 
homespun, and their speech, while as archaic as else- 
where, is, I believe, purer. You rarely hear "' you 
uns " and " we uns," and similar untraceable con- 
fusions in the Kentucky mountains, except along the 

27 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

border of the Tennessee. Moreover, the mountaineers 
who came over from West Virginia and from the 
southwestern corner of old Virginia were undoubtedly 
the daring, the hardy, and the strong, for no other kind 
would have climbed gloomy Black Mountain and the 
Cumberland Range to fight against beast and savage 
for their homes. 

However, in spite of the general superiority that 
these facts give him, the Kentucky mountaineer has 
been more isolated than the mountaineer of any other 
State. There are regions more remote and more 
sparsely settled, but nowhere in the Southern moun- 
tains has so large a body of mountaineers been shut off 
so completely from the outside world. As a result, he 
illustrates Mr. Theodore Roosevelt's fine observation 
that life away from civilization simply emphasizes the 
natural qualities, good and bad, of the individual. The 
effect of this truth seems perceptible in tliat any trait 
common to the Southern mountaineer seems to be in- 
tensified in the mountaineer of Kentucky. He is more 
clannish, prouder, more hospitable, fiercer, more loyal 
as a friend, more bitter as an enemy, and in simple 
meanness — when he is mean, mind you — he can out- 
Herod his race with great ease. 

To illustrate his clannishness: Three mountaineers 
with a grievance went up to some mines to drive the 

28 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

book-keeper away. A fourth man joined them and 
stood with drawn pistol during the controversy at the 
mines, because his wife was a first cousin by marriage 
of one of the three who had the grievance. In Re- 
pui)lican counties, county officers are often Democratic 
— blood is a stronger tie even than politics. 

As to his hospitality: A younger brother of mine 
was taking dinner with an old mountaineer. There 
was nothing on the table but some bread and a few 
potatoes. 

" Take out, stranger," he said, heartily. " Have a 
'tater — take two of 'em — take damn nigh all of 'em ! " 

A mountaineer, who had come into possession of a 
small saw-mill, was building a new house. As he had 
plenty of lumber, a friend of mine asked why he did 
not build a bigger house. It was big enough, he said. 
He had two rooms — " one fer the family, an' t'other 
fer company." As his family numbered fifteen, the 
scale on which he expected to entertain can be im- 
agined. 

The funeral sermon of a mountaineer, who had been 
dead two years, was preached in Turkey Foot at the 
base of Mount Scratchum in Jackson County. Three 
branches run together like a turkey's foot at that point. 
The mountain is called Scratchum because it is hard 
to climb. " A funeral sermon," said the old preacher, 

29 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

" can be the last one you hear, or the fust one that's 
preached over ye atter death. Maybe I'm a-preachin' 
my own funeral sermon now." If he was, he did him- 
self justice, for he preached three solid hours. The 
audience was invited to stay to dinner. Forty of them 
accepted — there were just forty there — and dinner was 
served from two o'clock until six. The forty were 
pressed to stay all night. Twenty-three did stay, sev- 
enteen in one room. Such is the hospitality of the 
Kentucky mountaineer. 

As to his pride, that is almost beyond belief. I 
always hesitate to tell this story, for the reason that 
I can hardly believe it myself. There was a plague 
in the mountains of eastern Kentucky, West Virginia, 
and the southwest corner of old Virginia in 1885. A 
cattle convention of St. Louis made up a relief fund 
and sent it for distribution to General Jubal Early of 
Virginia. General Early sent it to a lawyer of Ab- 
ingdon, Va., who persuaded D. F. Campbell, another 
lawyer now living in that town, to take the money 
into the mountains. Campbell left several hundred 
dollars in Virginia, and being told that the West Vir- 
ginians could take care of themselves went with the 
balance, about $1,000, into Kentucky, where the 
plague was at its worst. He found the suffering great 
— nine dead, in one instance, under a single roof. 

30 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

He spent one montli going from honse to house in the 
eonntics of Letclier, Perry, and Pike, carrying the 
money in his saddle-bags and riding nnarmed. Every 
man, woman, and child in the three counties knew 
he had the money and knew his mission. He left $5 
at a country store, and he got one woman to persuade 
another woman whose husband and three children were 
just dead, and who had indignantly refused his per- 
sonal offer of assistance, to accept $10. The rest of 
the money he took Ijack and distributed without 
trouble on his own side of the mountain. 

"While in Kentucky he found trouble in getting 
enough to eat for himself and his horse. Often he had 
only bread and onions; and yet he was permitted to 
pa}' but for one meal for either, and that was under 
protest at a regular boarding-house in a mountain town. 
Over tlie three counties, he got the same answer. 

" You are a stranger. We are not beggars, and 
we can take care of ourselves." 

" They are a curious people over there," said Camp- 
bell, who is a born Virginian. " No effort was made 
to rob me, though a man who was known as ' the only 
thief in Perry County,' a man whom I know to have 
been trusted with large sums by his leader in a local 
war, sent me a joking threat. The people were not sus- 
picious of me because I was a stranger. They con- 

31 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

cealed cases of suffering from me. It was pride that 
made tliem refuse the money — nothing else. They 
are the most loyal friends you ever saw. They will do 
anything for you, if they like you. They will get up 
and go anywhere for you day or night, rain or snow. 
If they haven't a horse, they'll walk. If they haven't 
shoes, they'll go barefooted. They will combine 
against you in a trade, and take every advantage they 
can. A man will keep you at his house to beat you 
out of a dollar, and when you leave, your board-bill is 
nothing." 

This testimony is from a Virginian, and it is a par- 
ticular pleasure for a representative of one of the 
second-class families of Virginia who, as the first fami- 
lies say, all emigrated to Kentucky, to prove, by the 
word of a Virginian, that we have some advantage in 
at least one section of the State. 

Indeed, no matter what may be said of the mountain- 
eer in general, the Kentucky mountaineer seems to 
go the fact one better. Elsewhere, families are large 
— " children and heepe," says Chaucer. In Jackson 
County a mountaineer died not long ago, not at an 
extreme old age, who left two hundred and seven de- 
scendants. He had fifteen children, and several of his 
children had fifteen. There was but one set of 
twins among them — both girls — and they were called 

32 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

Louisa and Louisa. There is in the same county a 
woman forty-seven years of age, with a grand-daugh- 
ter who has been married fifteen months. Only n 
break in the family tradition prevented her from be- 
ing a great-grandmother at forty-seven. 

It may be that the Kentucky mountaineer is more 
tempted to an earlier marriage than is the mountaineer 
elsewhere, for an artist who rode with me through the 
Kentucky mountains said that not only were the 
men finer looking, but that the women were far hand- 
somer than elsewhere in the southern Alleghanies. 
While I am not able to say this, I can say that in the 
Kentucky mountains the pretty mountain girl is not 
always, as some people are inclined to believe, pure 
fiction. Pretty girls are, however, rare; for usually 
the women are stoop-shouldered and large waisted 
from working in the fields and lifting heavy weights; 
for the same reason their hands are large and so are 
their feet, for they generally go barefoot. But usually 
they have modest faces and sad, modest eyes, and in 
the rich river-bottoms, where the mountain farmers 
have tenants and do not send their daughters to the 
fields, the girls are apt to be erect and agile, small of 
hand and foot, and usually they have a wild shyness 
that is very attractive. I recall one girl in crimson 
homespun, with very big dark eyes, slipping like a 

33 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

flame through the dark room, behind me, when I was 
on the porch; or gliding out of the one door, if I 
chanced to enter the other, which I did at every oppor- 
tunity. A friend who was with me saw her dancing 
in the dust at twdlight, next day, when she was driving 
the cows home. He helped her to milk and got to 
know her quite well, I believe. I know that, a year 
later, when she had worn away her shyness and most 
of her charm at school in her county seat, she asked 
me about him, with embarrassing frankness, and a 
look crept into her eyes that told an old tale. Pretty 
girls there are in abundance, but I have seen only one 
very beautiful mountain girl. One's standard can 
be affected by a long stay in the mountains, and 
I should have distrusted mine had it not been for 
the artist who was with me, fresh from civilization. 
We saw her, as we were riding up the Cumberland, 
and we silently and simultaneously drew rein and 
asked if we could get buttermilk. We could, and we 
swung from our horses. The girl was sitting behind 
a little cabin, with a baby in her lap, and her loveliness 
was startling. She was slender; her hair was gold- 
bro\vn; her hands were small and, for a wonder, beau- 
tifully shaped. Her teeth, for a wonder, too, were very 
white and even. Her features were delicately perfect ; 
her mouth shaped as Cupid's bow never was and never 

34 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

would be, said the artist, who christened her eyes after 
Trilby's — " twin gray stars " — to which the eyebrows 
and the long lashes gave an indescribable softness. But 
I felt more the brooding pathos that lay in them, that 
came from generations of lonely mothers before her, 
waiting in lonely cabins for the men to come home 
— back to those wild pioneer days, when they watched 
with an ever-present fear that they might not come 
at all. 

It was late and we tried to get to stay all night, 
for the artist wanted to sketch her. He was afraid 
to ask her permission on so short an acquaintance, 
for she would not have understood, and he would 
have frightened her. Her mother gave us buttermilk 
and we furtively studied her, but we could not stay 
all night: there were no men-folks at home and no 
'' roughness " for our horses, and we rode regretfully 
away. 

Now, while the good of the mountaineer is empha- 
sized in the mountaineer of Kentucky, the evil is 
equally marked. The Kentucky mountaineer may be 
the best of all — he can be likewise the worst of all. 

A mountaineer was under indictment for moon- 
shining in a little mountain town that has been under 
the refining influence of a railroad for several years. 
Unable to give bond, he was ordered to jail by the 

35 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

judge. When the sheriff rose, a huge mountaineer 
rose, too, in the rear of the court-room and whipped 
out a big revolver. " You come with me," he said, 
and the prisoner came, while judge, jury, and sheriff 
Avatched him march out. The big fellow took the pris- 
oner through the town and a few hundred yards up 
a creek, " You go on home," he said. Then the 
rescuer went calmly back to his house in town, and 
nothing further has been said or done to this day. The 
mountiaineer was a United States deputy marshal, but 
the prisoner was his friend. 

This marshal was one of the most picturesque figures 
in the mountains. When sober, he was kind-hearted, 
good-tempered, and gentle ; and always he was fearless 
and cool. Once, while firing at two assailants who 
were shooting at him, he stopped long enough to blow 
his nose deliberately, and then calmly went on shooting 
again. lie had a companion at arms who, singularly 
enough, came from the North, and occasionally these 
two would amuse themselves. When properly exhil- 
arated, one would put a horse-collar on the other, and 
hitch him to an open buggy. He would fill the buggy 
with pistols, climb in, and drive around the court- 
house — each man firing off a pistol with each hand and 
yelling himself hoarse. Then they would execute 
an Indian war-dance in the court-house square — firing 

36 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

their pistols alternately into the ground and into the 
air. The town looked on silently and with great 
respect, and the two were most exemplary until next 
time. 

A superintendent of some mines near a mountain 
toAvn went to the mayor one Sunday morning to get 
permission to do some work that had to be done in the 
town limits that day. He found the august official 
in his own jail. Exhilaration! 

It was at these mines that three natives of the town 
went up to drive two young men into the bushes. Be- 
ing met with some firmness and the muzzle of a 
Winchester, they went back for reinforcements. One 
of the three was a member of a famous fighting clan, 
and he gave it out that he was going for his friends 
to make the " furriners " leave the country. The 
young men appealed to the town for protection for 
themselves and property. There was not an ofiicer 
to answer. The sheriff was in another part of the 
county and the constable had just resigned. The 
young men got Winchester repeating shot-guns and 
waited a week for their assailants, who failed to come; 
but had they been besieged, there would not have been 
a soul to give them assistance, except perhaps the mar- 
shal and his New England friend. 

In this same county a man hired an assassin to kill 
37 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

his rival. The assassin crept to the window of the 
house where the girl lived, and, seeing a man sitting 
by the fire, shot through the window and killed him. 
It was the wrong man. Assassinations from ambush 
have not been uncommon in every feud, though, in 
almost every feud, there has been one faction that 
refused to fight except in the open. I have even heard 
of a snare being set for a woman, who, though repeat- 
edly warned, persisted in carrying news from one side 
to the other. A musket was loaded with slugs and 
placed so that the discharge would sweep the path 
that it was believed she would take. A string was tied 
to the trigger and stretched across the foot road and 
a mountaineer waited under a bluff to whistle, so that 
she would stop, when she struck the string. That 
night the woman happened to take another path. 
This, however, is the sole instance I have ever known. 
Elsewhere the Southern mountaineer holds human 
life as cheap; elsewhere he is ready to let death settle 
a personal dispute ; elsewhere he is more ignorant and 
has as little regard for law; elsewhere he was divided 
against himself by the war and was left in sub- 
sequent conditions just as lawless; elsewhere he has 
similar clannishness of feeling, and elsewhere is an 
occasional feud which is confined to family and close 
kindred. But nowhere is the feud so common, so 

38 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

old, so persistent, so deadly, as in the Kentucky 
mountains. jSTowhere else is there such organization, 
such division of enmity to the limit of kinship. 

About tliirty-five years ago two boys were playing 
marbles in the road along the Cumberland River — 
down in the Kentucky mountains. One had a patch 
on the seat of his trousers. The other boy made fun 
of it, and the boy with the patch went home and told 
his father. Thirty years of local war was the result. 
The factions fought on after they had forgotten why 
they had fought at all. While organized warfare is 
now over, an occasional fight yet comes over the patch 
on those trousers and a man or two is killed. A county 
as big as Rhode Island is still bitterly divided on the 
subject. In a race for the legislature not long ago, 
the feud was the sole issue. And, withoirt knowing 
it, perhaps, a mountaineer carried that patch like a 
flag to victory, and sat under it at the capital — making 
laws for the rest of the State. 

That is the feud that has stained the highland border 
of the State with blood, and abroad, has engulfed the 
reputation of the lowland blue-grass, where there are, 
of course, no feuds — a fact that sometimes seems to 
require emphasis, I am sorry to say. Almost every 
mountain county has, or has had, its feud. On one 
side is a leader whose authority is rarely questioned. 

39 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Each leader has his band of retainers. Always he arms 
them; usually he feeds them; sometimes he houses 
and clothes them, and sometimes, even, he hires them. 
In one local war, I remember, four dollars per day 
were the wages of the fighting man, and the leader 
on one occasion, while besieging his enemies — in the 
county court-house — tried to purchase a cannon, and 
from no other place than the State arsenal, and from 
no other personage than the governor himself. 

It is the feud that most sharply differentiates the 
Kentucky mountaineer from his fellows, and it is 
extreme isolation that makes possible in this age such 
a relic of mediaeval barbarism. For the feud means, 
of course, ignorance, shiftlessness, incredible lawless- 
ness, a frightful estimate of the value of human life; 
the horrible custom of ambush, a class of cowardly 
assassins who can be hired to do murder for a gun, 
a mule, or a gallon of moonshine. 

Now these are the blackest shadows in the only 
picture of Kentucky mountain life that has reached 
the light of print through the press. There is another 
side, and it is only fair to show it. 

The feud is an inheritance. There were feuds before 
the war, even on the edge of the blue-grass; there 
were fierce family fights in the backwoods before and 
during the Revolution — when the war between Whig 

40 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

and Tory served as a pretext for satisfying personal 
animosities already existing, and it is not a wild fancy 
that the Kentucky mountain feud takes root in Scot- 
land. For, while it is hardly possible that the enmities 
of the Revolution were transmitted to the Civil War, 
it is quite sure that whatever race instinct, old-world 
trait of character, or moral code the backwoodsman 
may have taken with him into the mountains — it is 
quite sure that that instinct, that trait of character, 
that moral code, are living forces in him to-day. The 
late war was, however, the chief cause of feuds. When 
it came, the river-bottoms were populated, the clans 
were formed. There were more slave-holders among 
them than among other Southern mountaineers. For 
that reason, the war divided them more evenly against 
themselves, and set them fighting. When the war 
stopped elsewhere, it simply kept on with them, be- 
cause they were more isolated, more evenly divided; 
because they were a fiercer race, and because the issue 
had become personal. The little that is going on now 
goes on for the same reason, for while civilization 
pressed close enough in 1890 and 1891 to put an end to 
organized fighting, it is a consistent fact that after 
the failure of Baring Brothers, and the stoppage of the 
flow of English capital into the mountains, and the 
check to railroads and civilization, these feuds slowly 

41 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

started up again. When I left home for the Cuban 
war, two companies of State militia were on their way 
to the mountains to put down a feud. On the day of 
the Las Guasimas fight these feudsmen fought, and 
they lost precisely as many men killed as the Rough 
Riders — eight. 

Again : while the feud may involve the sympathies 
of a county, the number of men actually engaged in 
it are comparatively few. Moreover, the feud is 
strictly of themselves, and is based primarily on a privi- 
lege that the mountaineer, the world over, has most 
grudgingly surrendered to the law, the privilege of 
avenging his private wrongs. The non-partisan and 
the traveller are never molested. Property of the 
beaten faction is never touched. The women are safe 
from hann, and I have never heard of one who was 
subjected to insult. Attend to your own business, side 
with neither faction in act or word and you are much 
safer among the Kentucky mountaineers, when a feud 
is going on, than you are crossing Broadway at 
Twenty-third Street. As you ride along, a bullet 
may plough through the road ten yards in front of 
you. That means for you to halt. A mountaineer 
will come out of the bushes and ask who you are and 
where you are going and what your business is. If 
your answers are satisfactory, you go on unmolested. 

42 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

Asking for a place to stay all night, you may be told, 
" Go to So and So's house; he'll pertect ye; " and he 
will, too, at the risk of his own life when you are past 
the line of suspicion and under his roof. 

There are other facts that soften a too harsh judg- 
ment of the mountaineer and his feud — harsh as the 
judgment should be. Personal fealty is the corner- 
stone of the feud. The mountaineer admits no higher 
law; he understands no conscience that will \dolate that 
tie. You are my friend or my kinsman ; your quarrel 
is my quarrel; whoever strikes you, strikes me. If 
you are in trouble, I must not testify against you. If 
you are an officer, you must not arrest me, you must 
send me word to come into court. If I'm innocent, 
why, maybe I'll come. 

Moreover, the worst have the list of rude virtues 
already mentioned; and, besides, the mountaineer is 
never a thief nor a robber, and he will lie about one 
thing and one thing only, and that is land. He has 
cleared it, built his cabin from the trees, lived on it 
and he feels that any means necessary to hold it are 
justifiable. Lastly, religion is as honestly used to 
cloak deviltry as it ever was in the Middle Ages. 

A feud leader who had about exterminated the op- 
posing faction, and had made a good fortune for a 
mountaineer while doing it, for he kept his men busy 

43 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

getting out timber when they weren't fighting, said 
to me, in all seriousness : 

" I have triumphed agin my enemies time and time 
agin. The Lord's on my side, and I gits a better and 
better Christian ever' year." 

A preacher, riding down a ravine, came upon 
an old mountaineer hiding in the bushes with his 
rifle. 

" What are you doing there, my friend? " 

" Ride on, stranger," was the easy answer. " I'm 
a-waitin' fer Jim Johnson, and with the help of the 
Lawd I'm goin' to blow his damn head off." 

Even the ambush, the hideous feature of the feud, 
took root in the days of the Revolution, and was 
borrowed, maybe, from the Indians. Milfort, the 
Frenchman, who hated the backwoodsman, says Mr. 
Roosevelt, describes with horror their extreme malevo- 
lence and their murderous disposition toward one an- 
other. He says that whether a wrong had been done 
to a man personally or to his family, he would, if 
necessary, travel a hundred miles and lurk around 
the forest indefinitely to get a chance to shoot his 
enemy. 

But the Civil War was the chief cause of bloodshed; 
for there is evidence, indeed, that though feeling be- 
tween families was strong, bloodshed was rare and the 

44 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

Engiisli sense of fairness prevailed, in certain com- 
munities at least. Often you shall bear an old moun- 
taineer say: " Folks usen to talk about bow fer tbey 
could kill a deer. Now bit's bow fer tbey can kill 
a man. Wby, I bave knowed tbe time wben a man 
would bev been druv outen tbe county fer drawin' a 
knife or a pistol, an' if a man was ever killed, bit wus 
kinder accidental by a Barlow. I reckon folks got 
used to weepons an' killin' an' sbootin' from tbe bresb 
endurin' tbe war. But bit's been gettin' wuss ever 
sence, and now bit's dirk an' Wincbester all tbe time." 
Even for tbe ambusb tbere is an explanation. 

" Ob, I know all tbe excuses folks make. Hit's 
fair for one as 'tis fer t'otber. You can't figbt a man 
far and squar wbo'll sboot you in tbe back. A pore 
man can't figbt money in tbe courts. Tbar liain't no 
witnesses in tbe lorrel but leaves, an' dead men don't 
bev mucb to say. I know bit all. Looks like lots o' 
decent young folks bev got usen to tbe idee; tbar's 
so mucb of it goin' on and tbar's so mucb talk about 
sbootin' from tbe bresb. I do reckon bit's wuss'n 
stealin' to take a feller critter's life tbat way." 

It is also a fact tbat most of tbe men wbo bave been 
engaged in tbese figbts were born, or were cbildren, 
during tbe war, and were, in consequence, accustomed 
to bloodshed and busbwbacking from infancy. Still, 

45 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

even among the fighters there is often a strong preju- 
dice against the ambush, and in most fends, one or the 
other side discountenances it, and that is the faction 
usually defeated, I know of one family that was one 
by one exterminated because they refused to take to 
the " bresh." 

Again, the secret of the feud is isolation. In the 
mountains the war kept on longer, for personal hatred 
supplanted its dead issues. Railroads and newspapers 
have had their influence elsewhere. Elsewhere court 
circuits include valley people. Civilization has pressed 
slowly on the Kentucky mountains. The Kentucky 
mountaineer, until quite lately, has been tried, when 
brought to trial at all, by the Kentucky mountaineer. 
And when a man is tried for a crime by a man who 
would commit that crime under the same circum- 
stances, punishment is not apt to follow. 

Thus the influence that has helped most to break 
up the feud is trial in the Blue-grass, for there is no 
ordeal the mountaineer more hates than trial by a jury 
of bigoted " furriners." 

Who they are — these Southern mountaineers — is 
a subject of endless conjecture and dispute — a question 
that perhaps will never be satisfactorily solved. While 
there are among them the descendants of the old bond 
servant and redemptioner class, of vicious runaway 

46 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

criminals and the trashiest of the poor whites, the 
ruKng class has imdonbtedly come from the old free 
settlers, English, German, Swiss, French Huguenot, 
even Scotch and Scotch-Irish. As the German and 
Swiss are easily traced to iSTorth Carolina, the Hugiie- 
nots to South Carolina and parts of Georgia, it is more 
than probable, from the scant study that has been 
given the question, that the strongest and largest cur- 
rent of blood in their veins comes from none other 
than the mighty stream of Scotch-Irish. 

Briefly, the theory is this: From 1720 to 1780, the 
settlers in southwest Virginia, middle jSTorth Carolina 
and western South Carolina were chiefly Scotch and 
Scotch-Irish, They were active in the measures pre- 
ceding the outbreak of the Revolution, and they 
declared independence at Abingtou, Va., even before 
they did at Mecklenburg, N. C. In these districts 
they were the largest element in the patriot army, and 
they were greatly impoverished by the war. Being 
too poor or too conscientious to own slaves, and unable 
to compete with them as the planter's field hand, black- 
smith, carpenter, wheelwright, and man-of-all-work, 
especially after the invention of the cotton-gin in 
1792, they had no employment and were driven to 
mountain and sand-hill. There are some good reasons 
for the theory. Among prominent mountain fami- 

47 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

lies direct testimony or unquestioned tradition point 
usually to Scotch-Irish ancestry, sometimes to pure 
Scotch origin, sometimes to English. Scotch-Irish 
family names in abundance speak for themselves, as 
do folk-words and folk-songs and the characteristics, 
mental, moral, and physical, of the people. Broadly 
speaking, the Southern mountaineers are characterized 
as " peaceable, civil, good-natured, kind, clever, nat- 
urally witty, with a fair share of common-sense, and 
morals not conscientiously bad, since they do not 
consider ignorance, idleness, poverty, or the ex- 
cessive use of tobacco or moonshine as immoral or 
vicious." 

Another student says: " The majority is of good 
blood, honest, law-abiding blood." Says still another: 
" They are ignorant of books, but sharp as a rule." 
Says another: " They have great reverence for the 
Bible, and are sturdy, loyal, and tenacious." More- 
over, the two objections to this theory that would 
naturally occur to anyone have easy answers. The 
mountaineers are not Presbyterian and they are not 
thrifty. Curiously enough, testimony exists to the 
effect that certain Methodist or Baptist churches were 
once Presbyterian; and many preachers of these two 
denominations had grandfathers who were Presby- 
terian ministers. The Methodists and Baptists were 

48 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

perhaps more active; they were more popular in the 
mountains as they M'^ere in the backwoods, because they 
were more democratic and more emotionah The back- 
woodsman did not like the preacher to be a preacher 
only. He, too, must work with his hands. 

Scotch-Irish thriftiness decayed. The soil was 
poor; game was abundant; hunting bred idleness. 
There were no books, no schools, few church privileges, 
a poorly educated ministry, and the present illiteracy, 
thriftlessness, and poverty were easy results. Deed- 
books show that the ancestors of men who now make 
their mark, often wrote a good hand. 

Such, briefly, is the Southern mountaineer in gen- 
eral, and the Kentucky mountaineer in particular. 
Or, rather, such he was until fifteen years ago, and 
to know him now you must know him as he was 
then, for the changes that have been wrought in the 
last decade aifect localities only, and the bulk of the 
mountain-people is, practically, still what it was one 
hundred years ago. Still, changes have taken j^lace 
and changes will take place now swiftly, and it 
rests largely with the outer world what these changes 
shall be. 

The vanguards of civilization — railroads — unless 
quickly followed by schools and churches, at the ratio 
of four schools to one church, have a bad effect on 

49 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

the Southern mountaineer. He catches up the vices 
of the incoming current only too readily. The fine 
spirit of his hospitality is worn away. He goes to some 
little " boom " town, is forced to pay the enormous 
sum of fifty cents for his dinner, and when you 
go his way again, you pay fifty cents for yours. Care- 
lessly applied charity weakens his pride, makes him 
dependent. You hear of aiTCsts for petty thefts some- 
times, occasionally burglaries are made, and the moun- 
taineer is cowed by the superior numbers, superior 
intelligence of the incomer, and he seems to lose his 
sturdy self-respect. 

And yet the result could easily be far different. 
Not long ago I talked with an intelligent young fellow, 
a young minister, who had taught among them many 
years, exclusively in the Kentucky mountains, and is 
now preaching to them. He says, they are more 
tractable, more easily moulded, more easily uplifted 
than the people of a similar grade of intelligence in 
cities. He gave an instance to illustrate their general 
susceptibility in all ways. When he took charge of 
a certain school, every boy and girl, nearly all of them 
grown, chewed tobacco. The teacher before him used 
tobacco and even exchanged it with his pupils. He 
told them at once they must stop. They left off in- 
stantly. 

SO 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

It was a " blab " school, as the mountaineers char- 
acterize a school in which the pupils study aloud. He 
put an end to that in one day, and he soon told them 
they must stop talking to one another. After school 
they said they didn't think they could ever do that, 
but they did. In another county, ten years ago, he 
had ten boys and girls gathered to organize a Sunday- 
school. None had ever been to Sunday-school and 
only two knew what a Sunday-school was. He an- 
nounced that he would organize one at that place a 
week later. When he reached the spot the following 
Sunday, there were seventy-five young mountaineers 
there. They had sung themselves quite hoarse wait- 
ing for him, and he was an hour early. The Sunday- 
school was founded, built up and developed into a 
church. 

When the first printing-press was taken to a certain 
mountain-town in 1882, a deputation of citizens met 
it three miles from town and swore that it should go 
no farther. An old preacher mounted the wagon and 
drove it into town. Later the leader of that crowd 
owned the printing-press and ran it. In this town 
are two academies for the education of the moun- 
taineer. Young fellows come there from every moun- 
tain-county and work their way through. They curry 
liorses, carry water, work about the houses — do every- 

51 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

thing; many of tliem cook for themselves and live 
on four dollars a month. They are quick-witted, 
strong-minded, sturdy, tenacious, and usually very 
religious. 

Indeed, people who have been among the Southern 
mountaineers testify that, as a race, they are proud, 
sensitive, hospitable, kindly, obliging in an unreckon- 
ing way that is almost pathetic, honest, loyal, in spite 
of their common ignorance, poverty, and isolation ; that 
they are naturally capable, eager to learn, easy to 
uplift. Americans to the core, they make the South- 
ern mountains a store-house of patriotism; in them- 
selves, they are an important offset to the Old World 
outcasts whom we have welcomed to our shores; and 
they surely deserve as much consideration from the 
nation as the negroes, for whom we have done, and 
are doing so much, or as the heathen, to whom we 
give millions. 

I confess that I have given prominence to the best 
features of mountain life and character, for the reason 
that the worst will easily make their own way. It is 
only fair to add, however, that nothing that has ever 
been said of the mountaineer's ignorance, shiftlessness, 
and awful disregard of human life, especially in the 
Kentucky mountains, that has not its basis, perhaps, 
in actual fact. 

52 



The Kentucky Mountaineer 

First, last, and always, however, it is to be remem- 
bered that to begin to understand the Southern moun- 
taineers you must go back to the social conditions 
and standards of the backwoods before the Revolu- 
tion, for practically they are the backwoods people and 
the backwoods conditions of pre-Revolutionary days. 
Many of their ancestors fought with ours for American 
independence. They were loyal to the Union for 
one reason that no historian seems ever to have guessed. 
For the loyalty of 18<jl was, in gi-eat part, merely 
the transmitted loyalty of 1776, imprisoned like a 
fossil in the hills. Precisely for the same reason, the 
mountaineer's estimate of the value of human life, of 
the sanctity of the law, of a duty that overrides either 
— the duty of one blood kinsman to another — is the 
estimate of that day and not of this; and it is by the 
standards of that day and not of this that he is to be 
judged. To understand the mountaineer, then, you 
must go back to the Eevolution. To do him justice 
you must give him the awful ordeal of a century of 
isolation and consequent ignorance in which to de- 
teriorate. Do that and your wonder, perhaps, that he 
is so bad becomes a wonder that he is not worse. To 
my mind, there is but one strain of American blood 
that could have stood that ordeal quite so well, and 
that comes from the sturdy Scotch-Irish who are slowly 

53 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

wresting from Puritan and Cavalier an equal share 
of the glory that belongs to the three for the part 
played on the world's stage by this land in the heroic 
role of Liberty. 



54 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 

THE heart of the Blue-grass in the middle of a 
sunny afternoon. An hour thence, through a 
rolling sweep of greening earth and woodland, 
through the low, poor hills of the brush country and 
into the oasis of Indian Old Fields, rich in level 
meadow-lands and wheat-fields. In the good old days 
of the war-wdioop and the scalping-knife, the savage 
had there one of the only two villages that he ever 
planted in the " Dark and Bloody Ground." There 
Daniel Boone camped one night and a pioneer read 
him " Gulliver's Travels," and the great Daniel called 
the little stream at their feet Lullibigrub — which name 
it bears to-day. Another hour between cliffs and 
pointed peaks and castled rocky summits, and through 
laurel and rhododendron to the Three Forks of the 
Kentucky. Up the Middle Fork then and at dusk 
the end of the railroad in the heart of the mountains 
and Jackson — the county-seat of " Bloody Breathitt " 
— once the seat of a lively feud and still the possible 

57 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

seat of another, in spite of the fact that with a manual 
training-school and a branch of a Blue-grass college, it 
is also the seat of learning and culture for the region 
drained by Cutshin, Hell-fer-Sartain, Kingdom Come, 
and other little streams of a nomenclature not less 
picturesque. Even Hell-fer-Sartain is looking up. A 
pious lady has established a Sunday-school on Hell-fer- 
Sartain. A humorous bookseller has offered to give 
it a library on the condition that he be allowed to 
design a book-plate for the volumes. And the Sun- 
day-school is officially known as the " Hell-fer-Sartain 
Sunday-school." From all these small tributaries of 
the Kentucky, the mountaineer floats logs down the 
river to the capital in the Blue-grass. Not many 
years ago that was his chief reason and his only one 
for going to the Blue-grass, and down the Kentucky 
on a raft was the best way for him to get there. He 
got back on foot. But, coming or going, by steam, 
water, horseback, or afoot, the trip is well worth while. 
At Jackson a man with a lantern put me in a 
" hack," drove me aboard a flat boat, ferried me over 
with a rope cable, cracked his whip, and we went up 
a steep, muddy bank into the town. All through the 
Cumberland valleys, nowadays, little " boom " towns 
with electric lights, water-works, and a street-railway 
make one think of the man who said " give him the 

58 




u^ 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 

luxuries of life and lie would do without tlie neces- 
saries." I did not know that Jackson had ever had 
a boom, but I thought so when I saw between the flap- 
ping curtains of the " hack " what seemed to be a 
white sidewalk of solid cement. 

" Hello," I said, " is that a sidewalk? " The driver 
grunted, quickly: 

" Hit's the side you walk on ! " 

A wheel of the hack went down to the hub in mud 
just then and I felt the force of his humor better next 
morning — I was to get such humor in plenty on the 
trip — when I went back to the river that same way. 
It was not a sidewalk of cement but a whitewashed 
board fence that had looked level in the dark, and 
except along a muddy foot-wide path close to the fence, 
passing there, for anything short of a stork on stilts, 
looked dangerous. I have known mules to drown in 
a mountain mud-hole. 

The " tide," as the moimtaineer calls a flood, had 
come the day before and, as I feared, the rafts were 
gone. Many of them had passed in the night, and 
there was nothing to do but to give chase. So I got 
a row-boat and a mountaineer, and, taking turns at the 
oars, we sped down the swift yellow water at the clip- 
ping rate of ten miles an hour. 

As early as the late days of August the mountaineer 
59 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

goes " logging " in order to cut the trees before tlie 
sap rises, so that the logs can dry better all winter and 
float better in the spring. Before frost comes, on 
river-bank, hill-side, and monntain-top, the cool morn- 
ing air is resonant with the ring of axes, the singing 
whistle of big saws, the crash of giant poplar and oak 
and chestnut down through the lesser growth nnder 
them, and the low boom that echoes through the 
woods when the big trees strike the earth. All winter 
this goes on. With the hammer of the woodpecker 
in the early spring, you hear the cries of ox-drivers 
" snaking " the logs down the mountain-side to the 
edge of some steep cliff, where they are tumbled pell- 
mell straight down to the bank of the river, or the 
bank of some little creek that runs into it. It takes 
eight yoke of oxen, sometimes, to drag the heart of a 
monarch to the chute, and there the logs are " rafted " 
— as the mountaineer calls the work; that is, they are 
rolled with hand-spikes into the water and lashed side 
by side with split saplings — lengthwise in the broad 
Big Sandy, broadside in the narrow Kentucky. Every 
third or fourth log is a poplar, because that wood is 
buoyant and will help float the chestnut and the oak. 
At bow and stern, a huge long limber oar is rigged on 
a turning stile, the raft is anchored to a tree with a 
cable of rope or grapevine, and there is a patient wait 

60 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 

for a " tide." Some day in March or April — some- 
times not until May — mist and clouds loose the rain 
in torrents, the neighbors gather, the cable is slipped, 
and the raft swings out the mouth of the creek on its 
long way to the land of which, to this day, the average 
mountaineer knows hardly less than that land knows 
of him. 

Steadily that morning we kept the clumsy row-boat 
sweeping around green-buttressed points and long 
bends of the river, between high vertical cliffs over- 
spread with vines and streaked white with waterfalls, 
through boiling eddies and long, swift, waving riffles, 
in an exhilaration that seems to come to running blood 
and straining muscles only in lonely wilds. Once a 
boy shied a stone down at us from the point of a cliff 
hundreds of feet sheer overhead. 

^' I wish I had my 44," said the mountaineer, look- 
ing wistfully upward. 

" You wouldn't shoot at him? " 

'' I'd skeer him a leetle, I reckon," he said, dryly, 
and then he told me stories of older and fiercer days 
when each man carried a " gun," and often had to 
use it to secure a landing on dark nights when the log- 
gers had to tie up to the bank. When the moon 
shines, the rafts keep going night and day. 

" When the river's purty swift, you know, it's hard 
6i 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

to stop a raft. I've seen a raft slash down through 
the bushes for two miles before a fellow could git a 
rope around a tree. So sometimes we had to ketch 
hold of another feller's raft that was already tied up, 
and, as there was danger o' pullin' his loose, the feller' d 
try to keep us off. That's whar the 44's come in. 
And they do it yit," he said, as, later, I learned for 
myself. 

Here and there were logs and splintered saplings 
thrown out on the bank of the river — signs of wreck- 
age where a raft had " bowed " ; that is, the bow had 
struck the bank at the bend of the river, the stern had 
swung around to the other shore, and the raft had 
hunched up in the middle like a bucking horse. 
Standing upright, the mountaineer can ride a single 
log down a swift stream, even when his weight sinks 
it a foot or two under the surface, but he finds it hard 
and dangerous to stay aboard a raft when it " bows." 

" I was bringin' a raft out o' Leatherwood Creek 
below lieah " — only that was not the name he gave 
the creek — " and we bowed just before we got to the 
river. Thar was a kind of a idgit on board who was 
just a-ridin' down the creek fer fun, and when I was 
throwed out in the woods I seed him go up in the air 
and come down kerflop in the water. He went under 
the raft, and crawled out about two hundred yards 

62 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 

down the river. We axed liim to git on ngin, but 
that idgit showed more sense than I knowed he had. 
He said he'd heerd o' hell and high water, and he'd 
been under one and mighty close to t'other, and he 
reckoned he'd stay whar he was." 

It w^as getting toward noon now. We had made 
full forty miles, and Leatherwood was the next stream 
below. 

'' We mought ketch a raft thar," said the moun- 
taineer; and we did. Sweeping around the bend I 
saw a raft two hundred feet long at the mouth of the 
creek — tugging at its anchor — and a young giant of a 
mountaineer pushing the bow-oar to and fro through 
the water to test its suppleness. He had a smile of 
pure delight on his bearded, winning face when we 
shot the row-boat alongside. 

" I tell you, Jim," he said, "^ hit's a sweet-pullin' 
oar." 

" It shorely is, Tom," said Jim. " Heah's a furri- 
ner that wants to go down the river with ye." 

" All right," said the giant, hospitably. " We're 
goin' just as soon as we can git off." 

On the bank was a group of men, women, and chil- 
dren gathered to watch the departure. In a basin of 
the creek above, men up to their waists in water were 
" rafting " logs. Higher above was a chute, and down 

63 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

it rolled more logs, jumping from end to end, like jack- 
straws. Higher, I could hear the hammer of a wood- 
pecker; higher still, the fluting of a wood-thrush, and 
still higher, an ox-driver's sharp cry. The vivid hues 
of dress and shawl on the bank seemed to strike out 
sharply every color-note in the green wall behind them, 
straight up to the mountain-top. It was as primitive 
and simple as Arcady. 

Down the bank came old Ben Sanders, as I learned 
later, shouting his good-byes, without looking behind 
him as he slipped down the bank. Close after him, 
his son, young Ben, with a huge pone of corn-bread 
three feet square. The boy was so trembling with 
excitement over his first trip that he came near drop- 
ping it. Then a mountaineer with lank, long hair, 
the scholar of the party, and Tim, guilty of humor but 
once on the trip — solemn Tim. Two others jumped 
aboard with bacon and cofl"ee — passengers like myself. 
Tom stood on shore with one hand on the cable, while 
he said something now and then to a girl in crimson 
homespun who stood near, looking downward. ISTow 
and then one of the other women would look at the 
two and laugh. 

" All right now, Tom," shouted old Ben, " let her 
loose! " 

Tom thrust out his hand, which the girl took shyly. 
64 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 

'' Don't fergit, Tom," she said. Tom laughed — 
there was little danger that Tom wonld forget — and 
with one twist of his sinewy hands he threw the loop 
of the graj)evine clear of the tree and, for all his great 
bulk, sprang like a cat aboard the raft, which shot for- 
ward with snch lightness that I was nearly thrown 
from my feet. 

"Good-by, Ben!" 

"Good-by, Molly!" 

" So long, boys! " 

" Don't you fergit that caliker, now, Ben." 

" I won't." 

" Tom," called a mountaineer, " ef you git drunk 
an' spend yo' money, Nance heah says she won't marry 
ye when you come back." Nance slapped at the fel- 
low, and the giant smiled. Then one piping voice : 

" Don't fergit my terbacky, Ben." 

" All right. Granny — I won't," answered old Ben, 
and, as we neared the bend of the river, he cried back: 

" Take that saddle home I borrowed o' Joe Thomas, 
an' don't fergit to send that side of bacon to Mandy 
Longnecker, an' — an' — " and then I got a last glimpse 
of the women shading their patient eyes to watch the 
lessening figures on the raft and the creaking oars flash- 
ing white in the sunlight; and I thought of them go- 
ing back to their lonely little cabins on this creek to 

65 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

await the home-coming of the men. If the mountain- 
women have any curiosity about that distant land, the 
Blue-grass " settlemints," they never show it. I have 
never known a mountain-woman to go down the river 
on a raft. Perhaps they don't care to go; perhaps it 
is not proper, for their ideas of propriety are very 
strict ; perhaps the long trip back on foot deterred them 
so long that the habit of not going is too strong to 
overcome. And then if they did go, who would tend 
the ever-present baby in arms, the ever-numerous chil- 
dren; make the garden and weed and hoe the young 
corn for the absent lord and master. I suppose it was 
generations of just such lonely women, waiting at their 
cabins in pioneer days for the men to come home, 
that gives the mountain-woman the brooding look of 
pathos that so touches the stranger's heart to-day; 
and it is the watching to-day that will keep unchanged 
that look of vacant sadness for generations to come. 

" Ease her up now ! " called old Ben — we were 
making our first turn — and big Tom at the bow, and 
young Ben and the scholar at the stern oar, swept the 
white saplings through the water with a terrific swish. 
Footholes had been cut along the logs, and in these 
the men stuck their toes as they pushed, with both 
hands on the oar and the oar across their breasts. At 
the end of the stroke, they threw the oar down and up 

66 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 

with rliythm and dash. Then they went back on a 
run to begin another stroke. 

" Ease her np — ease her up," said old Ben, sooth- 
ingly, and then, suddenly: 

" Hit her up — hit her up — hell! " 

Solemn Tim began to look ashore for a good place 
to jump. The bow barely slipped past the bend of the 
river. 

"That won't do," said old Ben again; "Hell!" 
Big Tom looked as crestfallen as a school-boy, and said 
nothing — we had just escaped " bowing " on our first 
turn. Ten minutes later we swept into the I^arrows 
— the " Nahrers " as the mountaineer says; and it 
was quick and dangerous work keeping the unwieldy 
craft from striking a bowlder, or the solid wall of a 
vertical cliff that on cither side rose straight upward, 
for the river was pressed into a narrow channel, and 
ran with terrific force. It was one long exhilarating 
thrill going through those ISTaiTows, and everybody 
looked relieved when we slipped out of them into 
broad water, which ran straight for half a mile — 
where the oars were left motionless and the men got 
back their breath and drew their pipes and bottles. I 
knew the innocent white liquor that revenue man and 
mountaineer call " moonshine," and a wary sip or two 
was enough for me. Along with the bottle came the 

67 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

inevitable first question that, under any and all circum- 
stances, every mountaineer asks the stranger, no mat- 
ter if the stranger has asked him a question first. 
" Well, stranger, what mought yo' name be? " 
Answering that, you are expected to tell in the same 
breath, as well, what your business is. I knew it was 
useless to tell mine — it would not have been under- 
stood, and would have engendered suspicion. I was 
at Jackson; I had long wanted to go down the river 
on a raft, and I let them think that I was going for 
curiosity and fun; but I am quite sure they were not 
wholly satisfied until I had given them ground to be- 
lieve that I could afford the trip for fun, by taking 
them up to the hotel that night for supper, and giv- 
ing them some very bad cigars. For, though the 
moon was full, the sky was black with clouds, and old 
Ben said we must tie up for the night. That tying 
up was exciting work. The raft was worked cautious- 
ly toward the shore, and a man stood at bow and stern 
with a rope, waiting his chance to jump ashore and 
coil it about a tree. Tom jumped first, and I never 
realized what the momentum of the raft was until I 
saw him, as he threw the rope about a tree, jerked 
like a straw into the bushes, the rope torn from his 
hands, and heard the raft crashing down through the 
undergrowth. Tom gave chase along the bank, and 

68 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 

everybody yelled and ran to and fro. It was crash — 
swish — bump — grind and crash again; and it was only 
by the hardest work at the clumsy oars that we kept 
the raft off the shore. From a rock Tom made a fly- 
ing leap aboard again, and luckily the river broadened 
there, and just past the point of a thicket we came 
upon another raft already anchored. The boy Ben 
picked up his rope and prepared to leap aboard the 
stranger, from the other end of which a mountaineer 
ran toward us. 

" Keep ofl," he shouted, " keep off, I tell ye," but 
the boy paid no attention, and the other man pulled 
his pistol. Ben dropped his rope, then looked around, 
laughed, picked up his rope again and jumped aboard. 
The fellow lowered his pistol and swore. I looked 
around, too, then. Every man on board with us had 
his pistol in his hand. We tugged the stranger's cable 
sorely, but it held him fast and he held us fast, and 
the tying up was done. 

" He'd 'a' done us the same way," said old Ben, in 
palliation. 

Next day it was easy sailing most of the time, 
and we had long rests from the oars, and we 
smoked, and the bottles were slowly emptied, one by 
one, while the mountaineers " jollied " each other and 
told drawling stories. Once we struck a long eddy, 

69 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

and were caught by it and swept back up-stream; twice 
this happened before we could get in the current again. 
Then they all laughed and " jollied " old Ben. 

It seemed that the old fellow had taken too much 
one dark night and had refused to tie up. There was 
a house at the head of this eddy, and when he struck 
it there was a gray horse hitched to the fence outside ; 
and inside was the sound of fiddles and furious danc- 
ing. Next morning old Ben told another raftsman 
that he had seen more gray horses and heard more 
fiddling that night than he had seen and heard since 
he was bom. 

" They was a-fiddlin' an' a-dancin' at every house 
I passed last night," he said, " an' I'm damned if I 
didn't see a gray hoss hitched outside every time I 
heerd the fiddlin'. I reckon they w^as ha'nts." The 
old fellow laughed good-naturedly while the scholar 
was telling his story. He had been caught in the 
eddy and had been swung around and around, passing 
the same house and the same horse each time. 

I believe I have remarked that those bottles were 
emptying fast. By noon they were quite empty, and 
two hours later, as we rounded a curve, the scholar 
went to the bow, put his hands to his mouth and 
shouted: 

"Whis-kee!" 

70 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 

And again: 

"Whiss-kee-ee!" 

A girl sprang from the porch of a cabin far down 
the stream, and a moment later a canoe was pushed 
from the bushes, and the girl, standing erect, paddled 
it upstream close to the bank and shot it out alongside 
the raft. 

''Howdyc, Mandy!" 

" Howdye, boys! " 

Young Ben took two bottles from her, gave her 
some pieces of silver, and, as we sped on, she turned 
shoreward again and stood holding the bushes and 
looking after us, watching young Ben, as he was 
watching her; for she was black-eyed and pretty. 

The sky was broken with hardly a single cloud that 
night. The moon w^as yellow as a flame, and we ran 
all 2iight long. I lay with my feet to the fire that Ben 
had built on some stones in the middle of the raft, 
looking up at the trees that arched over us, and the 
steep, moonlit cliffs, and the moon itself riding high 
and full and so brilliant that the stars seemed to have 
fallen in a shower all around the horizon. The raft 
ran as noiselessly as a lily-pad, and it was all as still 
and wild as a dream. Once or twice we heard the 
yelp of a fox-hound and the yell of a hunter out in 
the hills, and the mountaineers yelled back in answer 

71 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

and hied the dog on. Sometimes young Ben and the 
scholar, and even solemn Tim, sang some weird old 
ballad that one can hear now only in the Southern 
hills; and twice, to my delight and surprise, the scholar 
" yodelled." I wondered where he had learned how. 
He did not know — he had always known how. It was 
perhaps only another of the curious Old World sur- 
vivals that are of ceaseless interest to a speculative 
" furriner," and was no stranger than the songs he 
sang. I went to sleep by and by, and woke up shiv- 
ering. It was yet dark, but signs of day were evi- 
dent; and in the dim light I could see young Ben at 
the stern-oar on watch, and the huge shape of big Tom 
standing like a statue at the bow and peering ahead. 
"We had made good time during the night — the moun- 
taineers say a raft makes better time during the night 
— why, I could not see, nor could they explain, and at 
daybreak we were sweeping around the hills of the 
brush country, and the scholar who had pointed out 
things of interest (he was a school-teacher at home) 
began to show his parts with some pride. Every rock 
and cliif and turn and eddy down that long river has 
some picturesque name that the river-men have given 
it — names known only to them. Two rocks that 
shoved their black shoulders up on either side of the 
stream have been called Buck and Billy, after some 

72 



i 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 

old fellow's favorite oxen, for more than half a cen- 
tury. Here was an eagle's nest. A bear had been 
seen not long ago, looking from a black hole in the 
face of a cliff. How he got there no one could un- 
derstand. The scholar told some strong stories — now 
that we were in a region of historical interest — where 
Boone planted his first fort and where Boonesborough 
once stood, but he always prefaced his tale with the 
overwhelming authority that — 

"Hist'ry says!" 

He declared that history said that a bull, seeing 
some cows across the river, had jumped from the point 
of a high cliff straight down into the river; had 
swum across and fallen dead as he was climbing the 
bank. 

" He busted his heart," said the scholar. 

Oddly enough, solemn Tim, who had never cracked 
a smile, was the first to rebel. 

" You see that cliff yander? " said the scholar. 
" Well, hist'ry says that Dan'l Boone druv three 
Injuns once straight over that cliff down into the 
river." 

I could see that Tim was loath to cast discredit on 
the facts of history. If the scholar had said one or 
even two Indians, I don't think Tim would have called 
a halt; but for Daniel, with only one load in his gun 

71 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

— and it not a Winchester — to drive three — it was too 
mucli. And yet Tim never smiled, and it was the 
first time I heard him vohmtarily open his lips. 

" Well, hist'ry mouglit 'a' said that," he said, " but 
I reckon DanH was in the lead! " The yell that went 
up routed the scholar and stilled him. History said 
no farther down that stream, even when we were pass- 
ing between the majestic cliffs that in one place are 
spanned by the third highest bridge in the world. 
There a ferry was crossing the river, and old Ben grew 
reminiscential. He had been a ferryman back in the 
mountains. 

" Thar was a slosh of ice runnin' in the river," he 
said, " an' a feller come a-lopin' down the road one 
day, an' hollered an' axed me to take him across. I 
knowed from his voice that he was a-drinkin', and I 
hollered back an' axed him if he was drunk. 

"'Yes, I'm dnmk!' 

" ' How drunk? ' I says. 

" ' Drunk as hell ! ' he says, ' but I can ride that 
boat.' 

" Well, there was a awful slosh o' ice a-runnin', but 
I let him on, an' we hadn't got more'n ten feet from 
the bank when that feller fell off in that slosh o' ice. 
Well, I ketched him by one foot, and I drug him an' 
I drug him an' I drug his face about twenty feet in 

74 



Down the Kentucky on a Raft 

the mud, an' do you know that damn fool come might' 
nigh a-drownin' before I could change eends ! " 

Thence on, the trip was monotonous except for the 
Kentuckian who loves every blade of grass in his land 
— for we struck locks and dams and smooth and slower 
water, and the hills were low but high enough to shut 
off the blue-grass fields. But we knew they were 
there — slope and woodland, bursting into green — and 
the trip from highland to lowland, barren hillside to 
rich pasture -land — from rhododendron to blue-gi'ass 
— was done. 

At dusk that day we ran slowly into the little Ken- 
tucky capital, past distilleries and brick factories with 
tall smoking stacks and under the l)ig bridge and, 
wonder of wonders to Ben, past a little stern-wheel 
steamboat wheezing up-stream. Wc climl^ed the 
bank into the town, where the boy Ben and solemn 
Tim were for walking single file in the middle of the 
streets until called by the scholar to the sidewalk. 
The boy's eyes grew big with wonder when he saw 
streets and houses of stone, and heard the whistles of 
factories and saw what was to him a crush of people 
in the sleepy little town. I parted from them that 
night, but next morning I saw big Tom passing the 
station on foot. He said his companions had taken 
his things and gone on by train, and that he was 

75 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

going to walk back. I wondered, and while I asked 
no questions, I should like to wager that I guessed 
the truth. Tom had spent every cent of his money 
for the girl in crimson homespun who was waiting for 
him away back in the hills, and if I read her face 
aright I could have told him that she would have 
given every trinket he had sent her rather than wait 
a day longer for the sight of his face. We shook 
hands, and I watched him pass out of sight with his 
face set homeward across and beyond the blue-grass, 
through the brush country and the Indian Old Fields, 
back to his hills of laurel and rhododendron. 



76 



After Br'er Rabbit in the Blue-grass 




,,,.'/.. r/(/,v 



After Br'er Rabbit in the Blue-grass 

FOR little more than a month Jack Frost lias 
been busy — that areh-imp of Satan who has 
got himself enshrined in the hearts of little 
children. After the clear sunset of some late October 
day, when the clouds have hung low and kept the air 
chill, he has a good night for his evil work. By dawn 
the little magician has spun a robe of pure white, and 
drawn it close to the breast of the earth. The first 
light turns it silver, and shows the flowers and jewels 
with which wily Jack has decked it, so that it may 
be mistaken for a wedding-gown, perhaps, instead of 
a winding-sheet. The sun, knowing better, lifts, lets 
loose his tiny warriors, and, from pure love of beauty, 
with one stroke smites it gold. Then begins a battle 
which ends soon in crocodile tears of reconciliation 
from dauntless little Jack, with the blades of grass 
and the leaves in their scarlet finery sparkling with 
the joy of another day's deliverance, and the fields 
grown gray and aged in a single night. On just such 
a morning, and before the fight is quite done, saddle^ 

79 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

horses are stepping from big white bams in certain 
counties of the Blue-grass, and, sniffing the cool air, 
are being led to old-fashioned stiles, from which a lit- 
tle later they bear master or mistress out to the turn- 
pike and past flashing fields to the little county-seat 
several miles away. There in the court-house square 
they gather, the gentlefolk of country and town, and 
from that point they start into the country the other 
way. It is a hunting-meet. Br'er Rabbit is the 
quarry, and they are going for him on horseback with- 
out dog, stick, snare, or gun — a unique sport, and, so 
far as I know, confined wholly to the Blue-grass. 
There is less rusticity than cosmopolitanism in that 
happy land. The townspeople have farms, and the 
farmers own stores; intercourse between town and 
country is unrestrained ; and as for social position, that 
is a question one rarely hears discussed : one either has 
it unquestioned, or one has it not at all. So out they 
go, the hunters on horseback, and the chaperons and 
spectators in buggies, phaetons, and rockaways, 
through a morning that is cloudless and brilliant, past 
fields that are sober with autumn, and woods that are 
dingy with oaks and streaked with the fire of sumac 
and maple. New hemp lies in shining swaths on each 
side, while bales of last year's crop are going to mar- 
ket along the white turnpike. Already the farmers 

80 



After Br'er Rabbit 

are turning over the soil for the autumn sowing of 
wheat. Corn-shucking is just over, and ragged 
darkies are straggling from the fields back to town. 
Through such a scene move horse and vehicle, the rid- 
ers shouting, laughing, running races, and a quartet, 
perhaps, in a rockaway singing some old-fashioned 
song full of tune and sentiment. Six miles out, they 
turn in at a gate, where a big square brick house with 
a Grecian portico stands far back in a wooded yard, 
with a fish-pond on one side and a great smooth lawn 
on the other. Other hunters are waiting there, and 
the start is made through a Blue-grass woodland, 
greening with a second spring, and into a sweep of 
stubble and ragweed. There are two captains of the 
hunt. One is something of a wag, and has the voice 
of a trumpet. 

" Form a line, and form a good un! " he yells, and 
the line stretches out with a space of ten or fifteen feet 
between each horse and his neighbor on each side. 
The men are dressed as they please, the ladies as they 
please. English blood gets expression, as usual, in in- 
dependence absolute. There is a sturdy disregard of 
all considerations of form. Some men w^ear leggings, 
some high boots; a few have brown shooting-coats. 
Most of them ride with the heel low and the toes 
turned, according to temperament. The Southern 

8i 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

woman's long riding-skirt has happily been laid aside. 
These young Dianas wear the usual habit; only the 
hat is a derby, a cap, sometimes a beaver with a white 
veil, or a tam-o'-shanter that has slipped down behind 
and left a frank bare head of shining hair. They hold 
the reins in either hand, and not a crop is to be seen. 
There are plenty of riding-whips, however, and some- 
times one runs up the back of some girl's right arm, 
for that is the old-fashioned position for the whip when 
riding in form. On a trip like this, however, every- 
body rides to please his fancy, and rides anywhere but 
off his horse. The men are sturdy country youths, 
who in a few years will make good types of the beef- 
eating young English squire — sunburned fellows with 
big frames, open faces, fearless eyes, and a manner 
that is easy, cordial, kindly, independent. The girls 
are midway between the types of brunette and blonde, 
with a leaning toward the latter type. The extreme 
brunette is as rare as is the unlovely blonde, whom 
Oliver Wendell Holmes differentiates from her daz- 
zling sister with locks that have caught the light of the 
sun. Radiant with freshness these girls are, and with 
good health and streng-th ; round of figure, clear of eye 
and skin, spirited, soft of voice, and slow of speech. 

There is one man on a sorrel mule. He is the host 
back at the big farm-house, and he has given up every 

82 



After Br'er Rabbit 

liorse he has to guests. One of the girls has a broad 
white girth running all the way around both horse and 
saddle. Her habit is the most stylish in the field ; she 
has lived a year in "Washington, perhaps, and has had 
a finishing touch at a fashionable school in Xew York, 
Xear her is a young fellow on a black thoroughbred 
— a graduate, perhaps, of Yale or Princeton. They 
rarely put on airs, couples like these, when they come 
back home, but drop quietly into their old places with 
friends and kindred. From respect to local prejudice, 
which has a hearty contempt for anything that is not 
carried for actual use, she has left her riding-crop at 
home. He has let his crinkled black hair grow rather 
long, and has covered it with a black slouch-hat. Con- 
tact with the outer world has made a difference, how- 
ever, and it is enough to create a strong bond of sympa- 
thy between these two, and to cause trouble between 
country-bred Phyllis, plump, dark-eyed, bare-headed, 
who rides a pony that is trained to the hunt, as many of 
the horses are, and young farmer Corydon, who is near 
her on an iron-gray. Indeed, mischief is brewing 
among those four. At a brisk walk the line moves 
across the field, the captain at each end yelling to the 
men — only the men, for no woman is ever anywhere 
but where she ought to be in a Southern hunting-field 
— to keep it straight. 

83 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

" Billy," shouts the captain with the mighty voice, 
" I fine you ten dollars." The slouch-hat and the 
white girth are lagging behind. It is a lovers' quar- 
rel, and the girl looks a little flushed, while Phyllis 
watches smiling. " But you can compromise with 
me," adds the captain, and a jolly laugh runs down 
the line. JSTow comes a " rebel yell." Somewhere 
along the line, a horse leaps forward. Other horses 
jump too; everybody yells, and everybody's eye is on 
a little bunch of cotton that is being whisked with 
astonishing speed through the brown weeds. There 
is a massing of horses close behind it; the white girth 
flashes in the midst of the melee, and the slouch-hat 
is just behind. The bunch of cotton turns suddenly, 
and doubles back between the horses' feet. There is 
a gi'eat crash, and much turning, twisting, and sawing 
of bits. Then the crowd dashes the other way, with 
Corydon and Phyllis in the lead. The fun has begun. 



II 

From snow to snow in the Blue-grass, Br'er Rabbit 
has two inveterate enemies — the darky and the school- 
boy — and his lot is a hard one. Even in the late 
spring and early summer, when " ole Mis' " Rabbit is 
keeping house, either one of her foes will cast a de- 

84 



After Br'er Rabbit 

striictive stone at her, if she venture into open lane or 
pasture. When midsummer comes even, her tiny, 
long-eared brood is in danger. Not one of the little 
fellows is much larger than your doubled fist when 
the weeds get thick and high, and the elderberries are 
ripe, and the blackberries almost gone, but he is a ten- 
der morsel, and, with the darky, ranks in gastronomical 
favor close after the 'possum and the coon. You see 
him then hopping about the edge of hemp and har- 
vest fields, or crossing the country lanes, and he is very 
pretty, and so innocent and unwary that few have the 
heart to slay him, except his two ruthless foes. When 
the fields of grain are cut at harvest-time, both are on 
a close lookout for him. For, as the grain is mown 
about him, he is penned at last in a little square of 
uncut cover, and must make a dash for liberty 
through stones, sticks, dogs, and yelling darkies. Af- 
ter frost comes, the school-boy has both eyes open for 
him, and a stone ready, on his way ta and from his 
books, and he goes after him at noon recess and on 
Saturdays. The darky travels with a " rabbit-stick " 
three feet long in hand and a cur at his heels. Some- 
times he will get his young master's bird-dog out, and 
give Br'er Rabbit a chase, in spite of the swearing that 
surely awaits him, and the licking that may. Then 
he makes a " dead fall " for him — a broad board sup- 

85 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

porting a heavy rock, and supported by triggers that 
are set like the lines of the figure 4; or he will bend 
the top of a young sapling to the ground, and make 
a snare of a string, and some morning there is innocent 
Br'er Rabbit strung up like a murderer. Sometimes 
he will chase him into a rock fence, and then what is 
a square yard or so of masonry to one fat rabbit? 
Sometimes Br'er Rabbit will take a favorite refuge, 
a hollow tree; for, while he cannot climb a tree in the 
usual way, he can arch his back and rise spryly enough 
on the inside. Then does the ingenious darky con- 
trive a simple instrument of tortiu"e — a long, limber 
stick with a prong, or a split end. This he twists into 
Br'er Rabbit's fur until he can gather up with it one 
fold of his slack hide, and down comes the game. This 
hurts, and with this provocation only will the rabbit 
snap at the hunter's hand. If this device fails the 
hunter, he will try smoking him out; and if that fails, 
there is left the ax. Always, too, is the superstitious 
darky keen for the rabbit that is caught in a grave- 
yard, by a slow hound, at midnight, and in the dark 
of the moon. The left hind foot of that rabbit is a 
thing to conjure with. 

On Saturdays, both his foes are after him with dog 
and gun. If they have no dog they track him in the 
snow, or they " look for him settin' " in thick bunches 

86 



After Br'er Rabbit 

of winter blue-grass, or under briers and cut thorn- 
bushes that have been piled in little gullies; and, alas! 
they " shoot him settin' " until the darky has learned 
fair play from association, or the boy has had it 
thumped into him at school. Then will the latter give 
Br'er Rabbit a chance for his life by stirring him up 
with his brass-toed boot and taking a crack at him as 
he lopes away. It will be a long time before this boy 
will get old enough, or merciful enough to resist the 
impulse to get out of his buggy or off his horse, no 
matter where he is going or in how great a hurry, and 
shy a stone when a cottontail crosses his path. In- 
deed, a story comes down that a field of slaves threw 
aside their hoes once and dashed pell-mell after a pass- 
ing rabbit. An indignant observer reported the fact 
to their master, and this was the satisfaction he got, 

" Eun him, did they? " said the master, cheerfully. 
" AVell, I'd have whipped the last one of them, if 
they hadn't." 

And yet it is not until late in October that Br'er 
Eabbit need go into the jimson-weeds and seriously 
" wuck he haid " (work his head) over his personal 
safety; but it is very necessary then, and on Thanks- 
giving Day it behooves him to say his prayers in the 
thickest cover he can find. Every man's hand is 
against him that day. All the big hunting-parties are 

87 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

out, and the Iroquois Club of Lexington goes for him 
with horse and greyhound. And that is wild sport. 
Indeed, put a daredevil Kentuckian on a horse or be- 
hind him, and in a proper mood, and there is always 
wild sport — for the onlooker as well. It is hard to 
fathom the spirit of recklessness that most sharply dif- 
ferentiates the Southern hunter from his Northern 
brother, and that runs him amuck when he comes into 
contact with a horse, whether riding, driving, or bet- 
ting on him. If a thing has to be done in a hunting- 
field, or can be done, there is little difference between 
the two. Only the thing must, with the Northerner, 
be a matter of skill and judgment, and he likes to 
know his horse. To him, or to an Englishman, the 
Southern hunter's performances on a green horse look 
little short of criminal. In certain counties of Vir- 
ginia, where hunters follow the hounds after the Eng- 
lish fashion, the main point seems to be for each man 
to " hang up " the man behind him, and desperate 
risks are run. " I have stopped that boyish foolish- 
ness, though," said an aged hunter under thirty; " I 
give my horse a chance." In other words, he had 
stopped exacting of him the impossible. In Georgia, 
they follow hounds at a fast gallop through wooded 
bogs and swamps at night, and I have seen a horse 
go down twice within a distance of thirty yards, and 

88 



After Br er Rabbit 

the rider never leave his back. The same is tnie of 
Kentucky, and I suppose of other Southern States. I 
have known one of my friends in the Blue-grass to 
amuse himself by getting into his buggy an unsus- 
pecting friend, who was as sedate then as he is now 
(and he is a judge now), and driving him at full speed 
through an open gate, then whizzing through the 
woods and seeing how near he could graze the trunks 
of trees in his course, and how sharply he could turn, 
and ending up the circuit by dashing, still at full 
speed, into a creek, his companion still sedate and 
fearless, but swearing helplessly. Being bantered by 
an equally reckless friend one dark midnight while 
going home, this same man threw both reins out on 
his horse's back, and gave the high-strung beast a 
smart cut with his whip. He ran four miles, kept the 
pike by some mercy of Providence, and stopped ex- 
hausted at his master's gate. 

A Northern visitor was irritated by the apparently 
reckless driving of his host, who is a famous horseman 
in the Blue-grass. 

" You lunatic," he said, " you'd better drive over 
those stone piles! " meaning a heap of unbroken rocks 
that lay on one side of the turnpike. 

" I will," was the grave answer, and he did. 

This is the Kentuckian in a buggy. 
89 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Imagine him on horseback, with no ladies present 
to check the spirit or the spirits of the occasion, and 
we can believe that the Thanksgiving hunt of the Iro- 
quois Club is perhaps a little more serious business 
than playing polo, or riding after anise-seed. And 
yet there is hardly a member of this club who could 
sit in his saddle over the course at Meadowbrook or 
Chevy Chase, for the reason that he has never prac- 
tised jumping a horse in his stride, and because when 
he goes fast he takes the jockey seat, which is not, I 
believe, a good seat for a five-foot fence; at the same 
time, there is hardly a country-bred rider in the Blue- 
grass, man or woman, who would not try it. Still, 
accidents are rare, and it is yet a tenet in the creed 
of the Southern hunter that the safer plan is to take 
no care. On the chase with greyhounds the dogs run, 
of course, by sight, and the point with the huntsman 
is to be the first at the place of the kill. As the grey- 
hound tosses the rabbit several feet in the air and 
catches it when it falls, the place is seen by all, and 
there is a mad rush for that one spot. The hunters 
crash together, and often knock one another down. I 
have known two fallen horses and their riders to be 
cleared in a leap by two hunters who were close be- 
hind them. One of the men was struck by a hoof fly- 
ing over him. 

90 



After Br er Rabbit 

" I saw a shoe glisten," lie said, " and then it was 
darkness for a while." 

But it is the hunting without even a dog that is in- 
teresting, because it is unique and because the ladies 
share the fun. The sport doubtless originated with 
school-boys. They could not take dogs, or guns, to 
school; they had leisure at " big recess," as the noon 
hour was called ; they had horses, and the rabbits were 
just over the school-yard fence. One day two or 
three of them chased a rabbit down, and the fun was 
discovered. These same boys, perhaps, kept up the 
hunt after their school-days were over, and gave the 
fever to others, the more easily as foxes began to get 
scarce. Then the ladies began to take part, and the 
sport is what it is to-day. The President signs a great 
annual death-warrant for Br'er Rabbit in the Blue- 
grass when he fixes a day for Thanksgiving. 

Ill 

Again Br'er Rabbit twists, and Phyllis's little horse 
turns after him like a polo pony after a ball. The 
black thoroughbred makes a wide sweep; Corydon's 
iron-gray cuts in behind, and the whole crowd starts 
in a body toward the road. This rabbit is an old hand 
at this business, and he knows where safety lies. A 

91 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

moment later the horses come to their haunches at the 
pike fence. Br'er Eabbit has gone into a culvert un- 
der the road, and already a small boy and a yellow 
dog are making for that culvert from s farm-house 
near. Again the trumpet, " Form a line! " Again 
the long line starts. There has been a shifting of po- 
sitions. Corydon is next the white girth and stylish 
habit now, and he looks very much pleased. The 
slouch-hat of the college man and Phyllis's bare head 
are together, and the thoroughbred's master is talking 
earnestly. Phyllis looks across the field and smiles. 
Silly Corydon ! The slouch-hat is confessing his trou- 
ble to Phyllis and asking advice. Yes, she will help, as 
women will, out of pure friendship, pure unselfish- 
ness; sometimes they have other reasons, and Phyllis 
had two. Another yell, another rabbit. Off they go, 
and then, midway, still another cry and still another 
rabbit. The hunters part in twain, the black thorough- 
bred leading one wing, the iron-gray the other. Watch 
the slouch-hat now, and you shall see how the thing is 
done. The thoroughbred is learning what his master 
is after, and he swerves to the right; others are com- 
ing in from that direction ; the rabbit must turn again ; 
others that way, too. Poor Mollie is confused ; which- 
ever way her big, startled eyes turn, that way she sees 
a huge beast and a yelling demon bearing down on 

92 



After Brer Rabbit 

her. The slouch-hat swoops near her first, flings him- 
self from his horse, and, in spite of the riders pressing 
in on him, is after her on foot. Two others swing 
from their horses on the other side. Mollie makes 
several helpless hops, and the three scramble for her. 
The riders in front cry for those behind to hold their 
horses back, but they crowd in, and it is a miracle that 
none of the three is trampled down. The rabbit is 
hemmed in now; there is no way of escape, and in- 
stinctively she shrinks frightened to the earth. That 
is the crucial instant; down goes her pursuer on top 
of her as though she were a football, and the quarry 
is his. One blow of the hand behind the long ears, 
or one jerk by the hind legs, which snaps the neck as 
a whip cracks, and the slouch-hat holds aloft the brush, 
a little puff of down, and turns his eye about the field. 
The white girth is near, and as he starts toward her 
he is stopped by a low " Ahem! " behind him. Cory- 
don has caught the first rabbit, and already on the 
derby hat above the white girth is pinned the brush. 
The young fellow turns again. Phyllis, demure and 
unregarding, is there with her eyes on the horns of 
her saddle; but he understands, and a moment later 
she smiles with prettily feigned surprise, and the white 
puff moves off in her loosening brown hair. The 
white girth is betrayed into the faintest shadow of 

93 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

vexation. Corydon heard that eloquent little clear- 
ing of the throat with a darkling face, and, indeed, no 
one of the four looks very happy, except Phyllis. 

"Formaline!" 

Again the rabbits jump — one, two, three — and the 
horses dash and crash together, and the men swing to 
the ground, and are pushed and trampled in a mad 
clutch for Mollie's long ears; for it is a contest be- 
tween them as to who shall catch the most game. The 
iron-gray goes like a demon, and when Corydon drops, 
the horse is trained to stop and to stand still. This 
gives Corydon an advantage which balances the su- 
perior quickness of the thoroughbred and the agility 
of his rider. The hunting-party is broken up now 
into groups of three and four, each group after a rab- 
bit, and, for the time, the disgusted captains give up 
all hope of discipline. A horse has gone down in a 
gully. Two excited girls have jumped to the ground 
for a rabbit. The big mule threshes the weeds like 
a tornado. Crossing the field at a heavy gallop, he 
stops suddenly at a ditch, the girth of the old saddle 
breaks, and the host of the day goes on over the long 
ears. When he rises from the weeds, there is a shriek 
of laughter over the field, and then a mule-race, for, 
with a bray of freedom, the sorrel makes for home. 
Not a rabbit is jumped on the next circuit; that field 

94 




on 



After Br'er Rabbit 

is hunted out. No matter; there is another just 
across the meadow, and they make for it. More than 
a dozen rabbits dangle head downward behind the sad- 
dles of the men. Corydon has caught seven, and the 
slouch-hat five. The palm lies between them plainly, 
as does a bigger motive than the game. It is a mat- 
ter of gallantry — conferring the brush in the field; 
indeed, secrets are hidden rather than betrayed in that 
wa}': so Cor^'don is free to honor the white girth, and 
the slouch-hat can honor Phyllis without suspicion. 
The stylish habit shows four puffs of down; Phyllis 
wears five — every trophy that the slouch-hat has won. 
That is the way Phyllis is helping a friend, getting 
even with an enemy, and putting down a rebellion in 
her own camp. Even in the meadow a rabbit starts 
up, and there is a quick sprint in the open; but Br'er 
Rabbit, another old hand at the hunt, slips through 
the tall palings of a garden fence. In the other field 
the fun is more furious than ever, for the rabbits are 
thicker and the rivalry is very close. Corydon is get- 
ting excited; once, he nearly overrides his rival. 

The field has gone mad. The girl with the white 
girth is getting flushed with something more than ex- 
citement, and even Phyllis, demure as she still looks, 
is stirred a little. The pony's mistress is ahead by two 
brushes, and the white girth is a little vexed. She 

95 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

declares she is going to catch a rabbit herself. The 
slouch-hat hears, and watches her, thereafter, uneasily. 
And she does spring lightly, recklessly, to the ground 
just as the iron-gray and the thoroughbred crash in 
toward her, and, right between the horses' hoofs, Br'er 
Rabbit is caught in her little black riding-gloves. In- 
deed, the front feet of a horse strike her riding-skirt, 
mashing it into the soft earth, and miss crushing her 
by a foot. The slouch-hat is on the ground beside her. 
"You mustn't do that again!" he says with sharp 
authority. 

" Mr. ," she says, quietly, but haughtily, to 

Corydon, who is on the ground, too, " will you please 
help me on my hoi*se? " 

The slouch-hat looks as red as a flame, but Phyllis 
whispers comfort. " That's all right," she says, wise- 
ly; and it is all right. Under the slouch-hat, the white I 
face meant fear, anxiety, distress. The authority of 
the voice thrilled the girl, and in the depths of her 
heart she was pleased, and Phyllis knew. 

The sun is dropping fast, but they will try one more 
field, which lies beyond a broad pasture of blue-grass. 
Now comes the chase of the day. Something big and 
gray leaps from a bunch of grass and bounds away. 
It is the father of rabbits, and there is a race indeed 
— an open field, a straight course, and no favor. The 

96 



After Brer Rabbit 

devil take the hindmost! Listen to the music of the 
springy turf, and watch that thoroughbred whose 
master has stayed behind to put up the fence! He 
hasn't had half a chance before. He feels the grip of 
knees as his master rises to the racing-seat, and know- 
ing what that means, he lengthens. No great effort 
is apparent; he simply stretches himself close to the 
earth and skims it as a swallow skims a pond. Within 
two hundred yards he is side by side with Corydon, 
who is leading, and Corydon, being no fool, pulls in 
and lets him go on. Br'er Rabbit is going up one side 
of a long, shallow ravine. There is a grove of locusts 
at the upper end. The hunters behind see the slouch- 
hat cut around the crest of the hill, and, as luck would 
have it, Br'er Rabbit doubles, and comes back on the 
other side of the ravine. The thoroughbred has 
closed up the gap that the turn made, and is not fifty 
yards behind. Br'er Rabbit is making either for a 
rain-washed gully just opposite, or for a brier-patch 
farther down. So they wait. The cottontail clears 
the gully like a ball of thistledo\\Ti, and Phyllis hears 
a little gasp behind her as the thoroughbred, too, rises 
and cleaves the air. Horse and rabbit dash into the 
weedy cover, and the slouch-hat drops out of sight as 
three hunters ride yelling into it from the other side. 
There is a scramble in the bushes, and the slouch-hat 

97 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

emerges with the rabbit in his hand. As he rides 
slowly toward the waiting party, he looks at Phyllis 
as though to receive further orders. lie gets them. 
Wily Phyllis shakes her head as though to say : 

" Not me this time; Aer." 

And with a courtly inclination of the slouch-hat, 
the big brush goes to the white girth, in lieu of an 
olive-branch, for peace. 

The shadows are stretching fast; they will not try 
the other field. Back they start through the radiant 
air homeward, laughing, talking, bantering, living 
over the incidents of the day, the men with one leg 
swung over the pommel of their saddles for rest; the 
girls with habits disordered and torn, hair down, and 
a little tired, but all flushed, clear-eyed, and happy. 
The leaves, russet, gold, and crimson, are dropping 
to the green earth; the sunlight is as yellow as the 
wings of a butterfly ; and on the horizon is a faint haze 
that foreshadows the coming Indian summer. If it 
be Thanksgiving, a big dinner will be waiting for them 
at the stately old farm-house, or if a little later in the 
year, a hot supper instead. If the hunt is very in- 
formal, and there be neither, which rarely happens, 
everybody asks everybody else to go home with him, 
and everybody means it, and accepts if possible. This 
time it is warm enough for a great spread out in the 

98 



After Br er Rabbit 

yard on the lawn and under the big oaks. What a 
feast that is — chicken, turkey, cold ham, pickles, 
croquettes, creams, jellies, "beaten" biscuit! And 
what happy laughter, and thoughtful courtesy, and 
mellow kindness! 

Inside, most likely, it is cool enough for a fire in 
the big fireplace with the shining old brass andirons; 
and what quiet, solid, old-fashioned English comfort 
that light brings out! Two darky fiddlers are wait- 
ing on the back porch — waiting for a dram from 
" young cap'n," as " young marster " is now called. 
They do not wait long. By the time darkness settles, 
the fiddles are talking old tunes, and the nimble feet 
are busy. Like draws to like now, and the window- 
seats and the tall columns of the porch hear again what 
they have been listening to for so long. Corydon has 
drawn near. Does Phyllis sulk or look cold? Not 
Phyllis. You would not know that Corydon had ever 
left her side. It has been a day of sweet mischief to 
Phyllis. 

At midnight they ride forth in pairs into the crisp, 
brilliant air and under the kindly moon. The white 
girth turns toward town with the thoroughbred at her 
side, and Corydon and Phyllis take the other way. 
They live on adjoining farms, these two. Phyllis has 

not forgotten; oh, no! There is mild torture await- 

.LofC. ^^ 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

ing Corydon long after lie shall have forgotten the 
day, and he deserves it. Silly Corydon! to quarrel 
over nothing, and to think that he could make her 
jealous over that — the white girth is never phrased, 
for Phyllis stops there. It is not the first time these 
two girls have crossed foils. But there is peace now, 
and the little comedy of the day, seen by nearly every 
woman and by hardly a man, comes that night to a 
happy end. 



100 



Through the Bad Bend 



Through the Bad Bend 



A WILDLY beautiful cleft through the Cum- 
berland Range opens into the head of Powell's 
Yallev, in Virginia, and forms the Gap. 
From this point a party of us were going bass-fishing 
on a fork of the Cumberland River over in the Ken- 
tucky mountains. It was Sunday, and several 
]ventucky mountaineers had crossed over that day to 
take their first ride on the cars, and to see " the city " 
— as the Gap has been prophetically called ever since 
it had a cross-roads store, one little hotel, two farm- 
houses, and a blacksmith's shop. From them we 
learned that we could ride down Powell's Valley and 
get to the fork of the Cumberland by simply climb- 
ing over the mountain. As the mountaineers were 
going back home the same day, Breck and I boarded 
the train with them, intending to fish down the fork 
of the river to the point where the rest of the party 
would strike the same stream, two days later. 

At the second station down the road a crowd of 
Virginia mountaineers got on board. Most of them 

103 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

had been drinking, and the festi\dties soon began. One 
drunken young giant pulled his revolver, swung it 
back over his shoulder — the muzzle almost grazing a 
woman's face behind him — and swung it up again to 
send a bullet crashing through the top of the car. 
The hammer was at the turning-point when a com- 
panion caught his wrist. At the same time, the fel- 
low's sister sprang across the aisle, and, wrenching the 
weapon from his grasp, hid it in her dress. Simul- 
taneously his partner at the other end of the car was 
drawing a .45 Colt's half as long as his arm. A 
quick panic ran through the car, and in a moment 
there was no one in it with us but the mountaineers, 
the conductor, one brakeman, and one other man, who 
sat still in his seat, with one hand under his coat. The 
prospect was neither pleasant nor peaceful, and we 
rose to our feet and waited. The disanued giant was 
raging through the aisle searching and calling, with 
mighty oaths, for his pistol. The other had backed 
into a corner of the car, waving his revolver, turning 
his head from side to side to avoid a surprise in the 
rear, white with rage, and just drunk enough to 
shoot. The little conductor was unmoved and smiling, 
and, by some quiet mesmerism, he kept the two in 
subjection until the station was reached. 

The train moved out and left us among the drunken 
104 



Through the Bad Bend 

maniacs, no house in sight, the darkness settling on 
us, and the unclimbed mountain looming up into it. 
The belligerents paid no attention to us, however, but 
disappeared quickly, with an occasional pistol-shot 
and a yell from the bushes, each time sounding 
farther away. The Kentucky mountaineers were 
going to climb the mountain. A storm was coming, 
but there was nothing else to do. So we shouldered 
our traps and followed them. 

There were eight of us — an old man and his two 
daughters, the husband of one of these, the sweet- 
heart of the other, and a third man, who showed sus- 
picion of us from the beginning. This man with a 
flaring torch led the way; the old man followed him, 
and there were two mountaineers deep between the 
girls and us, who went last. 

It was not long before a ragged line of fire cut 
through the blackness overhead, and the thunder 
began to crash and the rain to fall. The torch was 
beaten out, and for a moment there was a halt. 
Breck and I could hear a muffled argument going on 
in the air above us, and, climbing toward the voices, 
we felt the lintel of a mountain-cabin and heard a 
long drawl of welcome. 

The cabin was one dark room without even a loft, 
the home of a newly married pair. They themselves 

105 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

had evidently just gotten home, for the hostess was 
on her knees at the big fireplace, blowing a few coals 
into a blaze. The rest of ns sat on the two beds in 
the room waiting for the fire-light, and somebody 
began talking about the trouble on the train. 

'' Did you see that feller settin' tliar with his hand 
under his coat while Jim was tryin' to shoot the brake- 
man?" said one. "Well, Jim killed his brother a 
year ago, an' the feller was jus' waitin' fer a chance 
to git Jim right then. I knowed that." 

" Who was the big fellow who started the row, by 
flourishing his pistol around ? " I asked. 

A man on the next bed leaned forward and 
laughed slightly. " Well, stranger, I reckon that 
was me." 

This sounds like the opening chapter of a piece of 
fiction, but we had really stumbled upon this man's 
cabin in the dark, and he was our host. A little 
spinal chill made me shiver. He had not seen us yet, 
and I began to wonder whether he would recognize 
us when the light blazed up, and whether he would 
know that we were ready to take part against him in 
the car, and what would happen, if he did. When the 
blaze did kindle, he was reaching for his hip, but he 
drew out a bottle of apple-jack and handed it over the 
foot of the bed. 

1 06 



Through the Bad Bend 

" Somebody ought to 'a' knocked my head off," he 
said. 

" That's so," said the yoimger girl, with sharp bold- 
ness. " I never seed sech doin's." 

The old mountaineer, her father, gave her a quick 
rebuke, but the man laughed. He was sobering up, 
and, apparently, he had never seen us before. The 
young wife prepared supper, and we ate and went to 
bed — the ten of us in that one room. The two girls 
took oi¥ their shoes and stockings with frank inno- 
cence, and warmed their bare feet at the fire. The 
host and hostess gave up their bed to the old moun- 
taineer and his son-in-law, and slept, like the rest of 
us, on the floor. 

AVe were wakened long before day. Indeed it was 
pitch dark when, after a mountain custom, we stum- 
bled to a little brook close to the cabin and washed 
our faces. A wood-thrush was singing somewhere in 
the darkness, and its cool notes had the liquid fresh- 
ness of the morning. We did not wait for breakfast, 
so anxious were the Kentuckians to get home, or so 
fearful were they of abusing their host's hospitality, 
though the latter urged us strenuously to stay. Kot 
a cent would he take from anybody, and I know now 
that he was a moonshiner, a feudsman, an outlaw, and 
that he was running from the sheriff at that very time. 

107 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

With a parting pull at the apple-jack, we began, on 
an empty stomach, that weary climb. Not far up the 
mountain Breck stopped, panting, while the moun- 
taineers were swinging on up the path without an 
effort, even the girls; but Breck swore that he had 
heart disease, and must rest. When I took part of 
his pack, the pretty one looked back over her 
shoulder and smiled at him without scorn. Both 
were shy, and had not spoken a dozen words with 
either of us. Half-way up we overtook a man and a 
boy, one carrying a tremendous demijohn and the 
other a small hand-bai-rel. They had been over on 
the Virginia side selling moonshine, and I saw the 
light of gladness in Breck's eye, for his own flask was 
wellnigh empty from returning our late host's cour- 
tesy. But both man and boy disappeared with a 
magical suddenness that became significant later. 
Already we were suspected as being revenue spies, 
though neither of us dreamed what the matter was. 

We reached the top after daybreak, and the beauty 
of the sunrise over still seas of white mist and wave 
after wave of blue Virginia hills was unspeakable, as 
was the beauty of the descent on the Kentucky side, 
down through primeval woods of majestic oak and 
poplar, under a trembling world of dew-drenched 
leaves, and along a tumbling series of waterfalls that 

1 08 



Through the Bad Bend 

flashed through tall ferns, blossoming laurel, and 
shining leaves of rhododendron. 

The sun was an hour high when we reached the 
foot of the mountain. There the old man and the 
young girl stopped at a little cabin where lived the 
son-in-law. "We, too, were pressed to stop, but we 
went on with the suspicious one to his house, where 
we got breakfast. There the people took pay, for 
their house was weather-boarded, and they were more 
civilized; or perhaps for the reason that the man 
thought us spies. I did not like his manner, and I 
got the first unmistakable hint of his suspicions after 
breakfast. I was down behind the barn, and he and 
another mountaineer came down on the other side. 

" Didn't one o' them fellers come down, this way? " 
I heard him ask. 

I started to make my presence known, but he spoke 
too quickly, and I concluded it was best to keep still. 

" No tellin' whut them damn fellers is up to. I 
don't like their occupation." 

That is, we were the first fishermen to cast a 
minnow with a reel into those waters, and it was 
beyond the mountaineer's comprehension to under- 
stand how two men could afford to come so far and 
spend time and a little money just for the fun of fish- 
ing. They supposed we were fishing for profit, and 

109 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

later they asked iis how we kept our fish fresh, and 
how we got them over the mountain, and where we 
sold them. With this idea, naturally it was a puzzle 
to them how we could afford to give a boy a quarter 
for a dozen minnows, and then, perhaps, catch not a 
single fish with them. 

When I got back to the house, Breck was rigging 
his rod, with a crowd of spectators around him. Such 
a rod and such a fisherman had never been seen in 
that country before. Breck was dressed in a white 
tennis-shirt, blue gymnasium breeches, blue stockings, 
and white tennis-shoes. With a cap on his shock of 
black hair and a .38 revolver in his belt, he was a 
thing for those women to look at and to admire, and 
for the men to scorn — secretly, of course, for there 
was a look in his black eyes that forced guarded re- 
spect in any crowd. The wonder of those moun- 
taineers when he put his rod together, fastened the 
reel, and tossed his hook fifty feet in the air was worth 
the morning's climb to see. At the same time they 
made fun of our rods, and laughed at the idea of get- 
ting out a big " green pyerch " — as the mountaineers 
call bass — with " them switches." Their method is 
to tie a strong line to a long hickory sapling, and, when 
they strike a bass, to put the stout pole over one 
shoulder and walk ashore with it. Before the sun 

no 



Through the Bad Bend 

was over the mountain, we were wading down tlie 
stream, while two boys carried onr minnows and 
clothes along the bank. The news of onr coming 
went before ns, and every now and then a man would 
roll out of the bushes with a gun and look at us with 
much suspicion and some wonder. For two luckless 
hours we cast down that too narrow and too shallow 
stream before we learned that there was a dam two 
miles farther down, and at once we took the land for 
it. It was after dinner when we reached it, and 
there the boys left us. We could not induce them to 
go farther. An old miller sat outside his mill across 
the river, looking at us with some curiosity, but no 
surprise, for the coming of a stranger in those moun- 
tains is always known miles ahead of him. 

"VVe told him our names and that we were from 
Yii'ginia, but were natives of the Blue-grass, and we 
asked if he could give us dinner. His house was half 
a mile farther down the river, he said, but the women 
folks were at home, and he reckoned they would give 
us something to eat. When we started, I shifted my 
revolver from my pocket to a kodak-camera case that 
I had brought along to hold fishing-tackle. 

" I suppose I can put this thing in here? " I said 
to Breck, not wanting to risk arrest for carrying con- 
cealed weapons and the confiscation of the pistol, 

III 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

which was vahiable. Breck hesitated, and the old 
miller studied us keenly. 

" Well," he said, " if you two air from Kanetucky, 
hit strikes me you ought to know the laws of yo' own 
State. You can carry it in thar as baggage," he 
added, quietly, and I knew that my question had 
added another fagot to the flame of suspicion kindling 
against us. 

In half an hour we were in the cool shade of a 
spreading apple-tree in the miller's yard, with our 
bare feet in thick, cool grass, while the miller's wife 
and his buxom, red-cheeked daughter got us dinner. 
And a good dinner it was; and we laughed and cracked 
jokes at each other till the sombre, suspicious old lady 
relaxed and laughed, too, and the girl lost some of her 
timidity and looked upon Breck with wide-eyed ad- 
miration, while Breck ogled back outrageously. 

After dinner a scowling mountaineer led a mule 
through the yard and gave us a surly nod. Two 
horsemen rode up to the gate and waited to escort 
us down the river. One of them carried our baggage, 
for no matter what he suspects, the mountaineer will 
do anything in the world for a stranger until the 
moment of actual conflict comes. In our green in- 
nocence, we thought it rather a good joke that we 
should be taken for revenue men, so that, Breck's flask 

112 



Through the Bad Bend 

Leing empty, he began by telling one of the men that 
we had been wading the river all the morning, that 
the water was cold, and that, anyway, a little swallow 
now and then often saved a fellow from a cold and 
fever. He had not been able to get any from any- 
body — and couldn't the man do something? The 
mountaineer was touched, and he took the half-dollar 
that Breck gave him, and turned it over, with a whis- 
pered consultation, to one of two more horsemen that 
we met later on the road. Still farther on we found 
a beautiful hole of water, edged with a smooth bank 
of sand — a famous place, the men told us, for green 
" pyerch." Mountaineers rolled out of the bushes to 
watch us while we were rigging up, some with guns 
and some without. We left our pistols on the shore, 
and several examined them curiously, especially mine, 
which was hammerless. Later, I showed them how it 
worked, and explained that one advantage of it was 
that, in close quarters, the other man could not seize 
your pistol, get his finger or thumb under your ham- 
mer, and prevent you from shooting at all. This 
often happens in a fight, of course, and the point ap- 
pealed to them strongly, but I could see that they 
were wondering why I should be carrying a gun that 
was good for close quarters, since close quarters are 
rarely necessary except in case of making aiTe-ts. 

113 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Pretty soon the two men who had gone for Breck's 
" moonshine " returned, and a gleam rose in Breck's 
eye and went quickly down. Instead of a bottle, the 
boy handed back the half-dollar. 

" I couldn't git any," he said. He lied, of course, 
as we both knew, and the disappointment in Breck's 
face was so sincere that his companion, with a gesture 
that was half sympathy, half defiance, whisked a 
bottle from his hip. 

" Well, by I'll give him a drink! " 

It was fiery, white as water, and so fresh that we 
could taste the smoke in it, but it was good, and we 
were grateful. All the afternoon, from two to a 
dozen people watched us fish, but we had poor luck, 
which is never a surprise, fishing for bass. Perhaps 
the fish had gone to nesting, or the trouble may have 
been the light of the moon, during which they feed all 
night, and are not so hungry through the day; or it 
may have been any of the myriad reasons that make 
the mystery and fascination of catching bass. At 
another time, and from the same stream, I have seen 
two rods take out one hundred bass, ranging from 
one to five pounds in weight, in a single day. An 
hour by sun, we struck for the house of the old man 
with whom we had crossed the mountain, and, that 
night, we learned that we had passed through a local- 

114 



Through the Bad Bend 

ity alive with moonshiners, and banded together with 
snch system and determination tliat the revenue 
agents rarely dared to make a raid on them. We were 
supposed to be two spies who were expected to come 
in there that spring. We had passed within thirty 
3'ards of a dozen stills, and our host hinted where Ave 
might find them. We thanked him, and told him we 
preferred to keep as far away from them as possible. 
He was much puzzled. He also said that we had been in 
the head-quarters of a famous desperado, who was the 
leader of the Howard faction in the famous Howard- 
Turner feud. He was a non-combatant himself, but 
he had " feelin's," as he phrased it, for the other side. 
He was much surprised when we told him we were 
going back there next day. We had told the people 
we were coming back, and next morning we were 
foolish enough to go. 

As soon as we struck the river, we saw a man with 
a Winchester sitting on a log across the stream, as 
though his sole business in life was to keep an eye on 
us. All that day we were never out of sight of a 
mountaineer and a gun; we never had been, I pre- 
sume, since our first breakfast on that stream. Still, 
everybody was kind and hospitable and honest — 
how honest this incident will show. An old woman 
cooked dinner especially for us, and I gave her two 

115 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

quarters. She took them, put them away, and while 
she sat smoking her pipe, I saw something was 
troubling her. She got up presently, went into a 
room, came back, and without a word dropped one of 
the quarters into my hand. Half a dollar was too 
much. They gave us moonshine, too, and Breck 
remarked casually that we were expecting to meet 
our friends at Uncle Job Turner's, somewhere do\vii 
the river. They would have red whiskey from the 
Blue-grass and we would be all right. Then he 
asked how far down Uncle Job lived. The remark 
and the question occasioned very badly concealed ex- 
citement, and I wondered what had happened, but I 
did not ask. I was getting wary, and I had become 
quite sure that the fishing must be better down, very 
far down, that stream. When we started again, the 
mountaineers evidently held a quick council of war. 
One can hear a long distance over water at the quiet 
of dusk, and they were having a lively discussion about 
us and our business over there. Somebody was de- 
fending us, and I recognized the voice as belonging to 
a red-whiskered fellow, who said he had lived awhile 
in the Blue-grass, and had seen young fellows starting 
to the Kentucky River to fish for fun. " Oh, them 
damn fellers ain't up to nothin'," we could hear him 
say, with the disgust of the cosmopolitan. " I tell 

ii6 



Through the Bad Bend 

ye, tliej lives in town an' they likes to git out this 



way! " 



I have always believed that this man saved ns 
trouble right then, for next night the mountaineers 
came down in a body to the honse where we had last 
stopped. But we had gone on rather hastily, and 
when we reached Uncle Job Turner's, the trip behind 
us became more interesting than ever in retrospect. 
All along we asked where Uncle Job lived, and once 
we shouted the question across the river, where some 
women and boys were at work, weeding corn. As 
usual, the answer was another question, and always 
the same — what were our names? Breck yelled, in 
answer, that we were from Virginia, and that they 
would be no wiser if we should tell — an answer that 
will always be unwise in the mountains of Kentucky 
as long as moonshine is made and feuds survive. We 
asked again, and another yell told us that the next 
house was Uncle Job's. The next house was rather 
pretentious. It had two or three rooms, apparently, 
and a loft, and was weather-boarded; but it was as 
silent as a tomb. We shouted "Hello! " from out- 
side the fence, which is etiquette in the mountains. 
'Not a sound. We shouted again — once, twice, many 
times. It was most strange. Then we waited, and 
shouted again, and at last a big gray-haired old fel- 

117 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

low slouched out and asked rather surlily what we 
wanted. 

" Dinner." 

He seemed pleased that that was all, and his man- 
ner changed immediately. His wife appeared; then, 
as if by magic, two or three children, one a slim, 
wild, dark-eyed girl of fifteen, dressed in crimson 
homespun. As we sat on the porch I saw her passing 
through the dark rooms, but always, while we were 
there, if I entered one door she slipped out of the 
other. Breck was more fortunate. He came up 
behind her the next day at sundown while she was 
dancing barefooted in the dust of the road, driving her 
cows home. Later I saw him in the cow-pen, helping 
her milk. He said she was very nice, but very shy. 

We got dinner, and the old man sent after a bottle 
of moonshine, and in an hour he was thawed out won- 
derfully. 

We told him where we had been, and as he slowly 
began to believe us, he alternately grew sobered and 
laughed aloud. 

" Went through thar fishin', did ye ? Wore yo' 
pistols? Axed whar thar was branches whar you 
could ketch minners? Oh, Lawd! Didn't ye know 
that the stills air al'ays up the branches? Tol' 'em 
you was goin' to meet a party at my house, and stay 

ii8 



Through the Bad Bend 

here awhile fishin'? Oh, Lawdy! Ef that am't a 
good un! " 

We didn't see it, but we did Liter, when we knew 
that we had come through the '' Bad Bend," which 
was the head-quarters of the Howard leader and his 
chief men; that Uncle Job was the most prominent 
man of the other faction, and lived farthest up the 
river of all the Turners; that he hadn't been up in 
the Bend for ten years, and that we had given his 
deadly enemies the impression that we were friends of 
his. As Uncle Job grew mellow, and warmed up in 
his confidences, something else curious came out. 
Every now and then he would look at me and say: 

" I seed you lookin' at my pants." And then he 
would throw back his head and laugh. After he had 
said this for the third time, I did look at his " pants," 
and I saw that he was soaking wet to the thighs — 
why, I soon learned. A nephew of his had killed a 
man at the county-seat only a week before. Uncle 
Job had gone on his bond. When we shouted across 
the river, he was in the cornfield, and when we did 
not tell our names, he got suspicious, and, mistaking 
our rod-holders for guns, had supposed that his nephew 
had run away, and that we were officers come to arrest 
him. He had run down the river on the other side, 
had waded the stream, and was up in the loft with his 

119 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Winchester on us while we were shouting at his gate. 
He told us this very frankly. Nor would even he 
believe that we were fishing. He, too, thought that 
we were officers looking through the Bad Bend for 
some criminal, and the least innocent mission that 
struck him as plausible was that, perhaps, we might be 
looking over the ground to locate a railroad, or pros- 
pecting for coal veins. When Uncle Job went down 
the road with us the next morning, he took his wife 
along, so that no Howard would try to ambush him 
through fear of hitting a woman. And late that 
afternoon, when we were fishing with Uncle Job's son 
in some thick bushes behind the house, some women 
passed along in the path above us, and, seeing us, but 
not seeing him, scurried out of sight as though fright- 
ened. Little Job grinned. 

" Them women thinks the How^ards have hired you 
fellers to layway dad." 

The next morning I lost Breck, and about noon I 
got a note from him, written with a trembling lead- 
pencil, to the effect that he believed he would fish up a 
certain creek that afternoon. As the creek was not 
more than three feet wdde and a few inches deep, I 
knew what had happened, and I climbed one of Job's 
mules and went to search for him. Breck had 
stumbled upon a moonshine still, and, getting hilari- 

120 



Through the Bad Bend 

oils, had climbed a barrel and was making to a crowd 
of mountaineers a fiery political speech. Breck had 
captured that creek, " wild-cat " still and all, and to 
this day I never meet a mountaineer from that region 
who does not ask, with a wide grin, about Breck. 

When we reached the county-seat, the next day, we 
met the revenue deputy. He said the town was talk- 
ing about two spies who were up the Fork. We told 
him that we must be the spies. The old miller was 
tlie brains of the Bend, he said, both in outwitting the 
revenue men and in planning the campaign of the 
Howard leader against the Turners, and he told us of 
several fights he had had in the Bad Bend. He said 
that we were lucky to come through alive; that what 
saved us was sticking to the river, hiring our minnows 
caught, leaving our pistols on the bank to be picked 
up by anybody, the defence of the red-whiskered man 
from the Blue-grass, and Breck's popularity at the 
still. I thought he was exaggerating — that the 
mountaineers, even if convinced that we were spies, 
would have given us a chance to get out of the 
country — but when he took me over to a room across 
the street and showed me where his predecessor, a man 
whom I had known quite well, was shot through a 
window at night and killed, I was not quite so sure. 

But still another straw of suspicion was awaiting us. 

121 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

When we reached the railroad again — by another 
route, you may be sure — Breck, being a lawyer, got 
permission for us to ride on a freight-train, and thus 
save a night and a day. The pass for us was tech- 
nically charged to the mail service. The captain and 
crew of the train were overwhelmingly and mysteri- 
ously polite to us — an inexplicable contrast to the 
surliness with which passengers are usually treated 
on a freight-train. When we got off at the Gap, 
and several people greeted us by name, the captain 
laughed. 

" Do you know what these boys thought you two 
were?" he asked, referring to his crew. "They 
thought you were freight ' spotters.' " 

The crew laughed. I looked at Breck, and I didn't 
wonder. He was a ragged, unshaven tramp, and I 
was another. 

Months later, I got a message from the Bad Bend. 
Breck and I mustn't come through there any more. 
We have never gone through there any more, 
though an^'body on business that the mountaineers 
understand, con go more safely than he can cross 
Broadway at Twenty-third Street, at noon. As a 
matter of fact, however, there are two other forks to 
the Cumberland in which the fishing is very good 
indeed, and just now I would rather risk Broadway. 

122 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 




i 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 



THE Judge parted his coat-tails to the big pine- 
wood blaze, and, with one measuring, vertical 
glance, asked me two questions : 
" Do you hunt coons? Do you hunt gray foxes? " 
A plea of not guilty was made to both, and the 
Judge waved his hand. 

" If you do," he said, " I decline to discuss the 
subject with you." 

Already another fox-hunter, who was still young, 
and therefore not quite lost to the outer world, had 
warned me. " They are cranks," he said, " fox-hunt- 
ers are — all of 'em." 

And then he, who was yet sane, went on to tell about 
liis hound, Red Star: how Red Star would seek a lost 
trail from stump to stump, or on top of a rail-fence; 
or, when crows cawed, would leave the trail and make 
for the crows; how he had once followed a fox twenty 
hours, and had finally gone after him into a sink-hole, 

125 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

from which he had been rescued several days later, 
almost starved. On cold winter nights the young 
hunter would often come on the lonely figure of the 
old Judge, who had walked miles out of town merely 
to sit on the fence and listen to the hounds. Against 
him, the warning was particular. I made a tentative 
mention of the drag-hunt, in which the hounds often 
ran mute, and the fun was in the horse, the ride, 
and the fences. For a moment the Judge was re- 
flective. 

" I remember," he said, slowly, as though he were 
a century back in reminiscence, " that the darkies used 
to drag a coonskin through the woods, and run mon- 
grels after it." 

A hint of fine scorn was in his tone, but it was the 
scorn of the sportsman and not of the sectionalist, 
though the Judge, when he was only fifteen, had 
carried pistol and sabre after John Morgan, and was, 
so the General said, a moment later, the gamest man 
in the Confederacy. 

" Why, sir, there is but one nobler animal than a 
long-eared, deep-mouthed, patient fox-hound — and 
that is a woman! Think of treating him that way! 
And the music is the thing! Many an old Virginian 
would give away a dog because his tongue was not in 
harmony with the rest. The chorus should be a 

126 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

chord. I shall never hear sweeter music, unless, by 
the grace of Heaven, I hear some day the choiring of 
angels." 

I was about to speak of the Maine and Massachu- 
setts custom of shooting the fox before the hounds, but 
the Judge forestalled me. 

" I believe, sir, that is worse — if worse be possible. 
I do not know what excuse the gentlemen make. 
The}' say, I believe, that their dogs cannot catch their 
red fox — that no dogs can. Well, the ground up 
there, being rough, is favorable to the fox, but our 
dogs can catch him. Logan, a Kentucky dog, has 
just caught a Massachusetts fox for the Brunswick 
Fiu' Club, and we have much better dogs here than 
Logan. 

" Yes," he added, tranquilly; " I believe it is gen- 
erally conceded now that the Kentucky dog has taken 
a stand with the Kentucky horse. The winnings on 
the bench and in the field, the reports wherever Ken- 
tucky dogs have been sent, the advertisements in the 
sporting papers, all show that. Steve Walker, who, by 
the way, will never sell a dog, and who will buy any 
dog that can beat his own, has tried every strain in 
this country except the Wild Goose Pack of Tennes- 
see. He has never gone outside the State without 
getting a worse dog. I reckon phosphate of lime has 

127 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

something to do with it. The same natural forces in 
the Blue-grass region that make horses better im- 
prove the dogs. Since the war, too, we have bred 
with more care; we have hunted more than people 
elsewhere, and we have bred the dog as we have the 
race-horse. Why, the Walkers — ah! " — the Judge 
stopped to listen — " There's Steve's horn now! " 

Only one man could blow that long mellow call, 
swelling and falling without a break, and ending like 
a distant echo. 

" We better go, boys," he said. 

Outside the hotel, the hunter's moon was tipped 
just over one of the many knobs from which Daniel 
Boone is said to have looked first over the Blue-grass 
land. A raindrop would have slipped from it into 
the red dawn just beneath. And that was the trouble, 
for hunters say there is never rain to drop when the 
moon is tipped that way. So the field trials had been 
given up; the country was too rough; and the ele- 
ments and the local sportsmen, who himted the ground 
by night that we were to hunt by day, held the effort 
in disfavor. That day everybody and everybody's 
hound were to go loose for simple fun, and the fun was 
beginning before dawm. In the stable-yard, darkies 
and mountaineers were bridling and saddling horses. 
The hunters were noisily coming and going from the 

128 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

little hotel that was a famous summer-resort in the 
Bath County Hills forty years ago, and, once owned by 
a great Kentuckian, was, the tradition goes, lost by him 
in a game of poker. Among them were several Blue- 
grass girls in derby hats, who had been in the saddle 
with us on the previous day from dark to dark, and on 
to midnight, and who were ready to do it again. 
There were fox-hunters from Maine, the Virginias, 
Ohio, and from England; and the contrasts were 
marked even among the Kentuckians who came from 
the Iroquois Club, of Lexington, with bang-tailed 
horses and top-boots; from the Strodes Valley Hunt 
Club and the Bourbon Kennels, who disdain any ac- 
coutrement on horseback that they do not wear on 
foot; and from the best-known fox-hunting family in 
the South, who dress and hunt after their own way, and 
whom I shall call Walkers, because they are never seen 
on foot. 'No Walker reaches the age of sixteen with- 
out being six feet high. There were four with us, 
and the shortest was six feet two, and weighed 185 
pounds. They wore great oilskin mackintoshes, and 
were superbly mounted on half thoroughbreds. Not 
long ago they carried their native county Democratic 
for one friend by 250 majority. At the next election 
they carried it Republican by the same majority for an- 
other friend. " We own everything in common," said 

129 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

one, who asked me to come over and spend a few 
months, or a year, or the rest of my natural life with 
him, " except our dogs." Xo Walker's dog will follow 
any other Walker, or come to his horn. All the Walk- 
ers had great, soft musical voices and gentle manners. 
All were church members, and, mirabile dictu, only 
one of the four touched whiskey, and he lightly. 
About one of them the General told a remarkable 
story. 

This Walker, he said, got into a difficulty with an- 
other young man just after the war. The two rode 
into the county town, hitched their horses, and met 
in the court-house square. They drew their pistols, 
which were old-fashioned, and emptied them, each 
man getting one bullet. Then they drew knives. 
They closed in after both had been cut slightly. The 
other man made for Walker's abdomen, just aa 
Walker's knife was high over his head for a terrible 
downward stroke. Walker had on an old army belt, 
and the knife struck the buckle and broke at the hilt. 
Walker saw it as his knife started down. He is a man 
of fierce passion, but even at that moment he let his 
knife fall and walked away. 

" It's easy enough in a duel," commented the Gen- 
eral, " when everything is cool and deliberate, to hold 
up if your adversary's pistol gets out of order; but in 

130 



i 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

a hand-to-hand fight like that ! They have been close 
friends ever since — naturally." 

Being such a company, we rode out of the stable- 
yard through the frosty dawn toward the hills, which 
sink by and by to the gentle undulations of Blue-gi'ass 
pasture and woodland. 



II 

In Kentucky, the hunting of the red fox antedates 
the war but little. The old Kentucky fox-hound was 
of every color, loose in build, with open feet and a 
cowhide tail. He had a good nose, and he was slow, 
but he was fast enough for the gray fox and the deer. 
Somewhere about 1855 the fox-hunters discovered 
that their hounds were chasing something they could 
not catch. A little later a nnile-driver came through 
Cumberland Gap with a young hound that he called 
Lead. Lead caught the eye of old General Maupin, 
who lived in Madison County, and whose name is 
now known to every fox-hunter North and South. 
Maupin started poor, and made a fortune in a frolic. 
He would go out hunting with his hounds, and would 
come back home wdth a drove of sheep and cattle. He 
was a keen trader, and would buy anything. He 
bought Lead, and, in the first chase. Lead slipped away 

131 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

from the old deer-hounds as though he knew what he 
was after; and it was not long before he captured the 
strange little beast that had been puzzling man and 
dog so long. Lead was thus the first hound to catch 
a red fox in Kentucky; and since every fox-hound in 
the State worthy of the name goes back to Lead, he is 
a very important personage. General Maupin never 
learned Lead's exact origin; perhaps he did not try 
very hard, for he soon ran across a suspicion that Lead 
had been stolen. He tried other dogs from the same 
locality in Tennessee from which he supposed the 
hound came, but with no good results. Lead was a 
lusus naturw, and old fox-hunters say that his like 
was never before him, and has never been since. 

People came for miles to see the red fox that Lead 
ran down, and the event was naturally an epoch in the 
history of the chase in Kentucky. Nobody knows 
why it took the red fox so long to make up his mind 
to emigrate to Kentucky, not being one of the second 
families of Virginia, and nobody knows why he came 
at all. Perhaps the shrewd little beast learned that 
over the mountains the dogs were slow and old-fash- 
ioned, and that he could have great fun with them and 
die of old age; perhaps the prescience of the war 
moved him; but certain it is that he did not take the 
" Wilderness Road " until the fifties, when began the 

132 




^ 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

inexplicable movement of his race south and south- 
west. But he took the trail of the gray fox then, just 
as the tide-water Virginians took the trail of the 
pioneers, and the gray fox gave way, and went 
farther west, as did the pioneer, and let the little red- 
coated aristocrat stamp his individuality on the Blue- 
grass as his human brother had done. For a long 
while he did have fun with those clumsy old hounds, 
running a hundred easy lengths ahead, dawdling time 
and again past his den, disdaining to take refuge, and 
turning back to run past the hounds when they had 
given up the chase — great fun, until old Lead came. 
After that, General Maupin and the Walkers imported 
]\Iartha and Rifler from England, and, since then, the 
red fox has been kept to his best pace so steadily that 
he now shows a proper respect for even a young Ken- 
tucky fox-hound. He was a great solace after the war, 
for Kentucky was less impoverished than other South- 
ern States, horses were plentiful, it was inexpensive to 
keep hounds, and other game was killed off. But 
fox-hunting got into disrepute. Hunting in Southern 
fashion requires a genius for leisure that was taken 
advantage of by ne'er-do-weels and scapegraces, young 
and old, who used it as a cloak for idleness, drinking, 
and general mischief. They broke down the farmer's 
fences, left his gates open, trampled his grain, and 

133 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

brought a reproach on the fox-hunter that is alive yet. 
It is dying rapidly, however, and families like the 
Clays, of Bourbon, the Robinsons and Hamiltons, of 
Mount Sterling, the Millers and Winns, of Clark, and 
the Walkers, of Garrard, are lifting the chase into 
high favor. Hitherto, the hunting has been done in- 
dividually. Now hunt clubs are being formed. 
Chief among them are the Bourbon Kennels, the 
Strodes Valley Hunt Club, and the Iroquois Club, the 
last having been in existence for ten years. This club 
does not confine itself to foxes, but is democratic 
enough to include coons and rabbits. 

Except in Maine and Massachusetts, where the fox 
is shot before the hounds, fox-hunting in the North is 
modelled after English ways. In Kentucky and else- 
where in the South, it is almost another sport. The 
Englishman wants his pack imifonn in color, size, 
tongue, and speed — a hound that is too fast must be 
counted out. The Kentuckian wants his hound to 
leave the rest behind, if he can. He has no whipper- 
in, no master of the hounds. Each man cries on his 
own dog. Nor has he any hunting terms, like " cross- 
country riding," or " riding to hounds." To hunt for 
the pleasure of the ride is his last thought. The fun 
is in the actual chase, in knowing the ways of the 
plucky little animal, in knowing the hounds indi- 

134 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

vidually, and the tongue of each, in the competition 
of one man's dog with another, or of favorites in the 
same pack. It is not often that the hounds are fol- 
lowed steadily. The stake-and-ridered fences every- 
where, and the barbed wire in the Blue-grass, would 
make following impossible, even if it were desirable. 
Instead, the hunters ride from ridge to ridge to wait, 
to listen, and to see. The Walkers hunt chiefly at 
night. The fox is then making his circuit for food, 
and the scent is better. Less stock is moving about to 
be frightened, or among which the fox can confuse 
the hounds. The music has a mysterious sweetness, 
the hounds hunt better, it seems less a waste of 
time, and it is more picturesque. At night the hounds 
trot at the horses' heels until a fire is built on some 
ridge. Then they go out to hunt a trail, while the 
hunters tie their horses in the brush, and sit around 
the fire telling stories until some steady old hound 
gives tongue. 

"There's old Kock! Whoop-ee! Go it, old 
boy!" Only he doesn't say "old boy" exactly. 
The actual epithet is bad, though it is endearing. It 
reaches old Rock if he is three miles away, and the 
crowd listens. 

" There's Ranger! Go it, Alice, old girl! Lead's 
ahead! " 

135 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Then they listen to the music. Sometimes the fox 
takes an unsuspected turn, and thej mount and ride 
for another ridge; and the reckless, daredevil race 
they make through the woods in the dark is to an out- 
sider pure insanity. Sometimes a man will want to 
go on one side of the tree when his horse prefers an- 
other, and the man is carried home senseless. Some- 
times a horse is killed, but no lesson is learned. The 
idea prevails that the more reckless one is, the better 
is his chance to get through alive, and it seems to hold 
good. In their county, the Walkers have both hills 
and blue-grass in which to hunt. The fox, they say, 
is leaving the hills, and taking up his home in the plan- 
tations, because he can get his living there with more 
ease. They hunt at least three nights out of the week 
all the year around, and they say that May is the best 
month of the year. The fox is rearing her young 
then. The hunters build a fire near a den, the she- 
fox barks to attract the attention of the dogs, and the 
race begins. At that time, the fox will not take a 
straight line to the mountains and end the chase as at 
other times of the year, but will circle about the den. 
It is true, perhaps, that at such times the male fox 
relieves the mother and takes his turn in keeping 
the hounds busy. The hunters thus get their pleas- 
ure without being obliged to leave their camp-fire. 

136 




Listening to the Music of the Dogs. 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

Karely at this time is the fox caught, and pro\dded he 
has had the fun of the chase, the Kentucky hunter is 
secretly glad, I believe, that the little fellow has gone 
scot-free. 

Such being the hunt, there is, of course, no cere- 
mony whatever in its details; it is " go as you please," 
as to horse, way of riding, dress, and riding accoutre- 
ments. The effect is picturesque and individual. 
Each man dresses, usually, as he dresses on foot, his scat 
is the military seat, his bridle has one rein, his horse 
is bridle-wise, and his hunter is his saddle-horse. The 
Kentuckian does not like to trot anywhere in the 
saddle. He prefers to go in a " rack," or a running 
walk. His horse, when he jumps at all, does not take 
fences in his stride, but standing. And I have yet to 
see anything more graceful than the slow rear, the 
calculating poise, the leap wholly from the hind feet, 
and the quick, high gather to clear the fence. It is 
not impossible to find a horse that will feel for the top 
rail with his knees, and if they are not high enough, 
he will lift them higher before making his leap. I 
have known of one horse that, while hitched to a stake- 
and-ridered fence, would jump the fence without 
unhitching himself. 

It was an odd and interesting crowd that went 
through the woods that morning — those long-maned, 

137 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

long-tailed horses, and their riders, the giants in 
slouched hats and oilskins, the pretty girls with a soft 
fire of anticipation in their straight, clear eyes — 
especially to the hunters from the East, and to the 
Englishman with his little hunting-saddle, his short 
sirirrups, his top-boots thrust into them to the heels, 
and his jockey-like seat — just as he was odd to them. 
I saw one Kentuckian double on his horse, laughing 
at the apparent inefficiency of his appearance, little 
knowing that in the English hunting-field the laugh 
would have been the other way. 

To the stranger, the hounds doubtless looked small 
and wiry, being bred for speed, as did the horses, be- 
cause of the thoroughbred blood in them, livery hacks 
though most of them were. Perhaps he was most 
surprised at the way those girls dashed through the 
woods, and the way the horses galloped over stones and 
roots, and climbed banks, for which purpose the East- 
ern hunter would have been inadequate, through lack 
of training. The Southern way of riding doubtless 
struck him as slovenly — the loose rein, the toes in the 
stirrups (which upheld merely the weight of the legs), 
the easy, careless, graceful seat; but he soon saw that 
it was admirably adapted to the purpose at hand — 
staying on the horse and getting out all that there was 
in him. For when the Southern fox-hunter starts 

138 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

after his hounds through wood and thicket, in day- 
light or dark, you know whence came the dashing 
horsemanship that gave the South a marked advantage 
some thirty years ago. And when he gets warmed 
up, and opens his throat to cry on his favorite hound, 
you know at last the origin of the " rebel yell," and 
you hear it again but little changed to-day. 



Ill 

Within ten minutes after the dogs were unleashed, 
there was an inspiriting little brush through the 
woods. A mule went down, and his rider executed 
a somersault. Another rider was unhorsed against a 
tree. How the girls came through with their skirts 
was a mystery ; but there they were, eager and smiling, 
when we halted on the edge of a cleared field. The 
hounds were circling far to the left. The General 
pointed to a smouldering fire which the local sportsmen 
had used through the night. 

" It's an old trail," he said, and we waited there, as 
we waited anywhere, with an unwearying patience 
that would have thrown an Eastern hunter into 
hysteria. 

" No, sir," said the General, courteously, in answer 
to a question; " I never sell a fox-dog; I consider him 

139 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

a member of my household. It would be a sacrilege 
to sell him." Then he continued learnedly and 
calmly: 

" As is the fox, so in time is the dog ; that is the 
theory. The old English dog was big-boned, coarse, 
and heavy, and he had to have greyhound blood 
before he could catch the English red fox. The Eng- 
lish dog has always been, and is now, inadequate for 
the American red fox. By selection, by breeding 
winner with winner, we have got a satisfactory dog, 
and the more satisfactory he is, the more is he like the 
fox, having become smaller in size, finer in bone, 
and more compact in shape. The hunted moulds the 
hunter: the American red fox is undoubtedly superior 
to the English red fox in speed, endurance, and 
stratagem, and he has made the American dog 
superior. The principle was illustrated when old 
Lead came over to Cumberland; for he was rather 
small and compact, his hair was long and his brush 
heavy, though his coat was coal-black except for a 
little tan about the face and eyes. The Virginia red 
fox had already fashioned Lead." 

The hounds were coming back now; they were near 
when the music ceased. The great yellow figure of a 
Walker was loping toward them through the frost- 
tipped sedge, with his hat in his hand and his thick 

140 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

gray hair catching the first sunlight. The General 
was right; the trail was old, and it was lost. As we 
rode across the field, however, an old hound gave 
tongue. Sharp, quick music began, and ceased just 
as another Walker was reaching down into his trousers' 
pocket for his plug of tobacco. 

" I believe that was a rabbit," he said. " I'm going 
over there and knock old Rock in the head." With- 
out taking his hand from his pocket, he touched his 
horse, and the animal rose in his tracks, poised, and 
leaped, landing on a slippery bank. The plug of 
tobacco was in one corner of the rider's mouth when 
both struck the road. He had moved in his saddle 
no more than if his horse had stepped over a log. 
ISTothing theatrical was intended. The utter non- 
chalance of the performance was paralyzing. He did 
not reach old Rock. Over to the right, another hound 
raised so significant a cry that Rock, with an answer- 
ing bay, went for him. In a moment they were 
sweeping around a knoll to the right, and the third 
Walker turned his horse through the sedge, loping 
easily, his hat still in his hand, a mighty picture on 
horseback; and as I started after him, I saw the 
fourth brother scramble up a perpendicular bank 
twice the length of his horse — each man gone accord- 
ing to his own judgment. T followed the swinging 

141 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

black hat, and caught up, and we halted in the woods 
to listen, both jerking the reins to keep the horses from 
champing their bits. One peculiar, deejD, musical 
tongue rose above the pack's cry. The big Walker 
stood in his stirrup, with his face uplifted, and I saw 
in it what fox-hunting means to the Kentuckian. 
Had he been looking into heaven, his face could not 
have been more rapt. 

" That's Rock ! " he said, breathlessly, and then 
he started through the woods. He weighed over 
200, and was six feet four. A hole through the 
woods that was big enough for him, was, I thought, 
big enough for me, and I had made up my mind to 
follow him half an hour, anyhow. My memory of 
that ride is a trifle confused. I saw the big yellow 
oilskin and the thick gray hair ahead of me, whisking 
around trees and stumps, and over rocks and roots. I 
heard a great crashing of branches and a clatter of 
stones. Every jump something rapped me across the 
breast or over the head ; my knees grazed trees on each 
side; a thorn dug into my face not far from one eye; 
and then I lay down on my horse's neck and thought 
of my sins. I did not know what it was all about, 
but I learned when I dared to lift my head. We 
had been running for a little hollow between the hills 
to see the fox pass, but we were too quick. Several 

142 




:q 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

hunters had crossed the trail before the hounds, and 
fox and scent were lost. 

" You've bu'sted up the chase," said a hunter, with 
deep disgust. 

" Who— we? " said the Walker. " Why, we have 
just been riding quietly up the ridge, haven't we?" 
Quietly — that was his idea of riding quietly! 

I told the General about that ride, and the General 
laughed. " That's Aim," he said, with ungram- 
matical emphasis. " He's fifty-three now, but he's 
the hardest hunter in this State to follow." 

We had to end the chase that day, and we went 
back to the hotel, early in the afternoon, so disheart- 
ened that the General threw his pride and his hunting 
traditions to the wind, and swore with a beautiful oath 
that the ladies should have a chase. He got a moun- 
taineer to climb a mule and drag a coonskin around 
the little valley. The natives brought in their dogs, 
and entered them for a quart of whiskey. The music 
started, and Logan was allowed to let out his noble 
length for exercise, and Patsy Powell slipped her leash 
and got away, while her master swore persistently that 
she was running because the others were — that she 
scorned the scent of a drag, and would hardly run a 
gray fox, let alone the skin of a coon. Logan came in 
ahead- but a native got the whiskey, and in half an 

143 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

hour every one of bis friends owned the best dog in the 
county. 

That last night, after a game of blind-man's-buff, we 
had intersectional toasts and congratulations, and wel- 
comes to come again. The conditions had all been 
antagonistic. It was too early; it was too dry; and 
there were many other reasons. 

The man from the Brunswick Fur Club explained 
that in his country the sportsmen shot the foxes be- 
cause the hounds could not catch them fast enough. 
The foxes were so thick up there that the people could 
hardly raise a Thanksgiving turkey. So they shot 
them to appease the farmers, whom they had to fight 
annually in the Legislature to prevent them from hav- 
ing the fox exterminated by law as a pest. The 
Southern sportsmen were glad to hear that, and drank 
to his health, and argued that the solution of the diffi- 
culty was to try more dogs like Logan. Then every- 
body discussed phases and problems of the chase that 
emphasized the peculiarities of hunting in the South 
— how the hounds, like the race-horse, have grown 
lighter, more rangy in form, smaller, solider in bone; 
and how, in spite of the increase in speed, they yet 
win by bottom, rather than by speed; that it was, 
after all, a question of the condition of the fox, 
whether he was gorged or not; that rough ground 

144 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

being favorable to the fox, more kills were made south 
of Virginia, because the ground is favorable to the 
hound ; how, since the war, the breeding has been tow- 
ard better feet, rougher hair, better brush, gameness, 
nose, and speed. Yet the Walkers say that hounds 
are not as good as they were twenty years ago; that 
the English dogs are tougher and have more bottom 
and less nose and speed; that the half thorough-bred 
makes the best hunter, the thorough-bred being too 
high-strung, too fretful; that the right proportion of 
English blood in the hound is one-fourth. And 
everybody wondered why some Kentucky horseman 
has never bred hunters for the Eastern market, argu- 
ing that the Kentucky hunter should excel, as the 
race-horse and the trotter have excelled. 

One and another told how a fox will avoid a corn- 
field, because a muddy tail impedes him; how he will 
swim a creek simply to wash it out; and how, in 
Florida, he will swim a river to escape the dogs, 
knowing that they will not follow him through fear of 
the alligators. How he will turn up-stream when he 
is not hard pressed, and down-stream when he is. 
Does the red fox actually kill out the gray ? One man 
had come on the fresh-bitten carcass of a gray in the 
snow, and, about it, there was not another sign than the 
track of a red fox. Or, does the gray disappear be- 

145 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

cause he is more easily cauglit, or does an instinctive 
terror of the red drive the gray off to other hunting- 
grounds? A hunter declared that a full-grown gray 
would show mortal terror of a red cub. Is the red 
fox a coward, or is he the only sporting member of the 
animal kingdom? Does he really enjoy the chase? 
Many had seen him climb a stump, or fence, to look 
back and listen to the music. One man claimed that 
he often doubled out of curiosity to see where the dogs 
were, though another had seen a fox go through the 
window of a deserted house, through the floor, and out 
under it ; and in doubling, go through it just the other 
way. lie always did that, and that did not look like 
curiosity. Several had known a fox, after the hounds 
had given up the chase and turned homeward, to turn, 
too, and run past the dogs with a plain challenge to try 
it again. Another said he had known a fox to run 
till tired, and then let a fresh fox take up the trail, 
and lead the hounds on while he rested in a thicket 
twenty yards away. All except one hunter had 
known foxes to run past their holes several times dur- 
ing the chase, and often to be caught within one or 
two hundred yards of a den. One opinion was that a 
fox would not go into his hole because he was too hot 
and would smother; another said he was game. But 
the doubting hunter, an old gentleman who was nearly 

146 



Fox-Hunting in Kentucky 

seventy, and who had kept close behind the hounds on 
a big sorrel, with an arm that had been thrown out of 
place at the shoulder only the night before, declared 
that most fox-stories were moonshine, that the fox was 
a sneaking little coward, and would make for a hole 
as soon as he heard a dog bark. There was one man 
who knew another man who had seen a strange thing. 
All the others had heard of it, and many believed it. 
A fox, hard pressed, had turned, and, with every 
bristle thrown forward, had run back, squealing 
piteously, into the jaws of the pack. 

" That's a bluff game," said the old hunter. 

" No," said another; " he knew that his end had 
come, and he went to meet it with his colors flying, like 
the dead-game little sport that he is." 



147 



To the Breaks of Sandy 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

DOWN in the southwestern corner of Virginia, 
and just over the Kentucky line, are the Gap 
and " Tlie Gap " — tlie one made by nature 
and the other by man. One is a ragged gash down 
through the Cumberland Mountains, from peak to 
water level; and the other is a new little, queer little 
town, on a pretty })lateau which is girdled by two run- 
ning streams that loop and come together like the 
framework of an ancient lute. E^ortheast the range 
runs, unbroken by nature and undisturbed by man, 
until it crumbles at the Breaks of Sandy, seventy 
miles away. There the bass leaps from rushing 
waters, and there, as nowhere else this side of the 
Rockies, is the face of nature wild and shy. 

It was midsummer, the hour was noon, and we were 
boimd for the Breaks of Sandy, seventy miles away. 

1^0 similar aggregate of man, trap, and beast had 
ever before penetrated those mountain wilds. The 
wagon was high-seated and the team was spiked, with 
Ivock and Ividgling as wheel horses, Diavolo as 

151 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

leader, and Dolly, a lialf-tboroiigli-bred, galloping be- 
hind under Sam, the black cook, and a wild Western 
saddle, with high pommels, heavily hooded stirrups, 
hand-worked leather, and multitudinous straps and 
shaking rawhide strings; and running alongside, 
Tiger, bull-terrier. Any man wdio was at Andover, 
Cornell, or Harvard during certain years will, if he 
sees these lines, remember Tiger. 

As for the men — there was Josh, ex-captain of a 
Kentucky Horse Guard, ex-captain of the volunteer 
police force back at " The Gap," and, like Henry 
Clay, always captain whenever and wherever there 
was anything to be done and more than one man Avas 
needed to do it; now, one of the later-day pioneers 
who went back over the Cumberland, not many years 
ago, to reclaim a certain wild little corner of old Vir- 
ginia, and then, as now, the fii'st man and the leading 
lawyer of the same. There was another Kentuckian, 
fresh from the Blue-grass — Little AVillie, as he was 
styled on this trip — being six feet three in his 
bare feet, carrying 190 pounds of bone and muscle; 
champion heavy-weight with his fists in college 
(he could never get anybody to fight with him), 
centre-rush in foot-ball, with this grewsome record 
of broken bones: collar-bone, one leg, one knee 
three times, and three teeth smashed — smashed by 

152 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

biting through his nose guard against each other 
when he set his jaws to break through a hostile Hne. 
Also, Willie was ex-bugler of a military school, singer 
of coon songs unrivalled, and with other accomplish- 
ments for which there is no space here to record. 
There was Dan, boj-manager of a mighty coal com- 
pany, good fellow, and of importance to the dog-lover 
as the master of Tiger. I include Tiger here, be- 
cause he was so little less than human. There are no 
words to describe Tiger. He was prepared for Yale 
at Andover, went to Cornell in a pet, took a post-grad- 
uate course at Harvard, and, getting indifference and 
world-weariness there, folloAved his master to pioneer 
in the Cumberland. Tiger has a white collar, white- 
tipped tail, white feet; his body is short, strong, close- 
knit, tawny, ringed; and his peculiar distinctions are 
intelligence, character, magnetism. All through the 
mountains Tiger has run his fifty miles a day behind 
Dolly, the thorough-bred ; so that, in a radius of a hun- 
dred miles, there is nobody who does not know that 
dog. Still, he never walks unless it is necessary, and 
his particular oscillation is between the mines and 
" The Gap," ten miles apart. Being a coal magnate, 
he has an annual pass and he always takes the train — 
alone, if he pleases — changing cars three times and 
paying no attention, until his stations are called. 

153 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Sometimes lie is too weary to go to a station, so lie sits 
down on the track and waits for the train. I have 
known the engineer of a heavily laden freight train to 
slacken up when he saw Tiger trotting ahead between 
the rails, and stop to take him aboard, did Tiger but 
nod on him. I have never seen man, woman, or child, 
of respectable antecedents, whom that dog didn't love, 
and nobody, regardless of antecedents, who didn't 
love that dog. 

Such, we rattled out of " The Gap " that mid- 
summer noon. Northward, through the Gap, a cloud 
of dun smoke hung over the Hades of coke ovens that 
Dan had planted in the hills. On the right was the 
Ridge, heavy with beds of ore. Straight ahead was a 
furnace, from which the coke rose as pale-blue smoke 
and the ore gave out a stream of molten iron. Farther 
on, mountains to the right and mountains to the left 
came together at a little gap, and toward that point we 
rattled up Powell's Valley — smiling back at the sun; 
furnace, ore-mine, coke-cloud, and other ugly signs of 
civilization dropping behind us fast, and our eyes set 
toward one green lovely spot that was a shrine of 
things primeval. 

In the wagon we had a tent, and things to eat, and 
a wooden box that looked like a typewriter case, 
under lock and key, and eloquently inscribed: 

154 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

" Glass, 2 gal." It is a great way to carry the 
indispensable — in a wagon — and I recommend it to 
fishermen. 

At the foot of the first mountain was a spring and 
we stopped to water the horses and unlock that case. 
Twenty yards above, and to one side of the road, a 
mountaineer was hanging over the fence, looking 
down at us. 

" Have a drink? " said Josh. 

" Yes," he drawled, " if ye'll fetch it up." 

" Come an' get it," said Josh, shortly. 

" Are you sick? " I asked. 

" Sort o' puny." 

We drank. 

" Have a drink? " said Josh once more. 

" If ye'll fetch it up." 

Josh drove the cork home Avith the muscular base 
of his thumb. 

" I'm damned if I do." 

Dan whistled to Diavolo, and we speculated. It 
was queer conduct in the mountaineer — why didn't 
he come down? 

" I don't know," said Dan. 

" He really came down for a drink," I said, know- 
ing the mountaineer's independence, " and he wanted 
to prove to himself and to us that he didn't." 

155 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

" A smart Alec," said Little Willie. 

" A plain damn fool," said Josh. 

Half an hour later we were on top of the moun- 
tain, in the little gap where the mountains came 
together. Below us the valley started on its long, rich 
sweep southward, and beyond were the grim shoulders 
of Black Mountains, which we were to brush now and 
then on our way to the " Breaks." 

There Dan put Tiger out of the wagon and made 
him walk. After three plaintive whines to his mas- 
ter to show cause for such an outrage, Tiger dropped 
nose and eyes to the ground and jogged along with 
such human sullenness that Willie was led to speak to 
him. Tiger paid no attention. I called him and 
Dan called him. Tiger never so much as lifted eye 
or ear, and Willie watched him, wondering. 

'^ Why, that dog's got a grouch," he said at last, 
delightedly. " I tell you he's got a grouch." It was 
Willie's first observation of Tiger. Of course he had 
a " grouch " as distinctly as a child who is old enough 
to show petulance with dignity. And having made 
us feel sufficiently mean. Tiger dropped quite behind, 
as though to say: " I'm gettin' kind o' tired o' this. 
Now ' It's come here. Tiger,' and ' Stick in the mud, 
Tiger,' and straightway again, ' Tiger, come here.' I 
don't like it. I'd go home if it weren't for Dolly and 

156 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

this nigger here, whom I reckon I've got to watch. 
But I'll stick in the mud." And he did. 

At dusk we passed through Norton, where Talt 
Hall, desperado, killed his thirteenth and last man, 
and on along a rocky, muddy, Stygian-black road 
to Wise Court-house, where our police guard from 
" The Gap," with Josh as captain, guarded Talt for 
one month to keep his Kentucky clan from rescuing 
him. And there we told Dan and the big Ken- 
tuckian how banker, broker, lawyer, and doctor left 
his business and his home, cut j)ort-holes in the court- 
house, put the town under martial law, and, with 
twenty men with Winchesters in the rude box that 
enclosed the scaffold, and a cordon of a hundred more 
in a circle outside, to keep back a thousand mountain- 
eers, thus made possible the first hanging that the 
county had ever known. And how, later, in the same 
way we hung old Doc Taylor, Hall's enemy — Sweden- 
borgian preacher, herb doctor, revenue officer, and des- 
perado — the " Red Fox of the Mountains." 

The two listeners were much interested, for, in truth, 
that police guard of gentlemen who hewed strictly to 
the line of the law, who patrolled the streets of " The 
Gap " with billy, whistle, and pistol, knocking down 
toughs, lugging them to the calaboose, appearing in 
court against them next morning, and maintaining a 

157 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

fund for the prosecution of them in the higher courts, 
was as unique and successful an experiment in civiliza- 
tion as any borderland has ever known. 

'Next day we ran the crests of long ridges and 
struck good roads, and it was then that we spiked 
Rock and Ridgling, with Diavolo as leader. 

" Tool 'em! " shouted Willie, and we " tooled " 
joyously. A coach-horn was all that we lacked, and 
we did not lack that long. Willie evolved one from 
his unaided throat, in some mysterious way that he 
could not explain, but he did the tooting about as well 
as it is ever done with a horn. It was hot, and the 
natives stared. They took us for the advance-guard 
of a circus. 

" Where are you goin' to show? " they shouted. 
We crossed ridges, too, tooling recklessly about the 
edges of precipices and along roads scarcely wide 
enough for one wagon — Dan swinging to the brake 
with one hand and holding Josh in the driver's seat 
with the other — Willie and I speculating, meanwhile, 
how much higher the hind wheel could go from the 
ground before the wagon would overturn. It was 
great fun, and dangerous. 

" Hank Monies is not in it," said Willie. 

The brake required both of Dan's hands just 
then and Josh flew out into space and landed on 

158 




Thfv took us for the ;uh;iiK'e-y;u;ird ot" a circus. 



To the Breaks of Sandy- 
Ins shoulder, some ten feet down the mountain, un- 
hurt. 

Rock, though it was his first work under harness, 
was steady as a plough-horse. Ridgling now and then 
would snort and plunge and paw, getting one foot over 
the wagon tongue. Diavolo, like his master, was a 
born leader, or we should have had trouble indeed. 

That night we struck another county-seat, where 
the court-house had been a brick bone of contention 
for many, many years — two localities claiming the 
elsewhere undisputed honor, for the reason that they 
alone had the only two level acres in the county on 
which a court-house could stand. A bitter fight it 
was, and they do say that not many years ago, in a 
similar conflict, the opposing factions met to de- 
cide the question with fist and skull — 150 picked 
men on each side — a direct and curious survival of 
the ancient wager of battle. The women prevented 
the fight. Over in Kentucky there would have been 
a bloody feud. At that town we had but fitful sleep. 
Certain little demons of the dark, which shall be 
nameless, marked us, as they always mark fresh vic- 
tims, for their own. 

" I'll bet they look over the register every night," 
said Willie — baring a red-splotched brawny arm next 
morning. 

159 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

" Wingless victory ! " he said, fvirther. 

And then on. Wilder and ever wilder, next day, 
grew the hills and woods and the slitting chasms be- 
tween them. First one hind wheel dished — we braced 
it with hickory saplings. Then the other — we braced 
that. The harness broke — Dan mended that. A 
horse cast a shoe — Josh shod him then and there. 
These two were always tinkering, and were happy. 
Inefficiency made AVillie and me miserable — it was 
plain that we were to be hewers of wood and drawers 
of water on that trip, and we were. 

And still wilder and ever wilder was the face of 
Nature, which turned primeval — turned Greek. 
Willie swore he could see the fleeting shapes of 
nymphs in the dancing sunlight and shadows under 
the beeches. Where the cane-rushes shivered and 
shook along the bank of a creek, it was a satyr chasing 
a dryad through them; and once — it may have been 
the tinkle of water — but I was sure I heard her laugh 
float from a dark little ravine high above, where she 
had fled to hide. No wonder! We were approach- 
ing the most isolated spot, perhaps, this side of the 
Rockies. If this be hard to believe, listen. Once we 
stopped at a cabin, and Sam, the black cook, went in 
for a drink of water. A little girl saw him and was 
thrown almost into convulsions of terror. She had 

1 60 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

never seen a negro before. Her mother had told her, 
doubtless, that the bad man would get her some day 
and she thought Sam was the devil and that he had 
come for her. And this in Virginia. I knew there 
were many white people in Virginia, and all through- 
out the Cumberland, who had never seen a black man, 
and why they hate him as they do has always been a 
mystery, especially as they often grant him social 
equality, even to the point of eating at the same table 
with him, though the mountaineer who establishes 
certain relations with the race that is still tolerated 
in the South, brings himself into lasting disgrace. 
Perhaps the hostility reaches back to the time when 
the poor white saw him a fatal enemy, as a slave, to the 
white man who must work with his hands. And yet, 
to say that this competition with the black man, along 
w^ith a hatred of his aristocratic master, was the reason 
for the universal Union sentiment of the Southern 
mountaineer during the war is absurd. Competition 
ceased nearly a century ago. Negro and aristocrat 
were forgotten — were long unknown. No historian 
seems to have guessed that the mountaineer was loyal 
because of 1776. The fight for the old flag in 1812 
and the Mexican War helped, but 177G was enough to 
keep him loyal to this day; for to-day, in life, charac- 
ter, customs, speech, and conviction, he is practically 

i6i 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

what lie was then. But a change is coming now, and 
down in a little hollow we saw, suddenly, a startling 
sign — a frame house with an upper balcony, and, 
moving along that balcony, a tall figure in a pink un- 
girded Mother Hubbard. And, mother of all that is 
modern, we saw against the doorway below her — a 
bicycle. We took dinner there and the girl gave me 
her card. It read: 

AMANDA TOLLIVEE, 

EXECUTEIX TO JOSIAH TOLLIVER. 

Only that was not her name. She owned coal lands, 
was a woman of judgment and business, and realizing 
that she could not develop them alone, had advertised 
for a partner in coal, and, I was told, in love as well. 
Anyhow there were numerous pictures of young men 
around, and I have a faint suspicion that as we swung 
over the brow of the hill, we might have been taken 
for suitors four. She had been to school at the 
county-seat where we spent the first night, and had 
thus swung into the stream of Progress. She had live 
gold fish in a glass tank and jugs with plants growing 
out of the mouth and out of holes in the sides. And 
she had a carpet in the parlor and fire-screens of red 
calico and red plush albums, a birthday book, and, of 

162 




3 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

course, a cottage organ. It was all prophetic, I sup- 
pose, and the inevitable American way toward higher 
things; and it was at once sad and hopeful. 

Just over the hill, humanity disappeared again and 
Nature turned primeval — turned Greek again. And 
again nymphs and river gods began their play. 
Pretty soon a dryad took human shape in some black- 
berry bushes, and Little Willie proceeded to take 
mythological shape as a faun. We moderns jollied 
him on the metamorphosis. 

The Breaks were just ahead. Somewhere through 
the green thickness of poplar, oak, and maple, the 
river lashed and boiled between gray bowlders, eddied 
and danced and laughed through deep pools, or leaped 
in waves over long riffles, and we turned toward the 
low, far sound of its waters. A slip of a bare-footed 
girl stepped from the bushes and ran down the wood- 
path, and Willie checked her to engage in unnecessary 
small talk and to ask questions whereof he knew the 
answers as well as she — all leading to the final one. 

" What's your name? " Unlike her hill-sisters, the 
girl was not shy. 

" Melissa." 

Shades of Ilymettus, but it was fitting. There 
were blackberry stains about her red lips. Her eyes 
had the gloom of deep woods and shone from the dark- 

163 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

ness of her tumbled hair — tumbled it was, like an oat- 
field I had seen that morning after a wind and rain 
storm that swept it all night long. 

"Melissa!" Willie said softly, once, twice, three 
times; and his throat gurgled with poetic delight in 
the maid and the name. I think he would have said 
" Prithee " and addressed her some more, but just 
then a homespun mother veered about the corner of a 
log cabin, and Melissa fled. Willie thought he had 
scared her. 

" On the way to the Breaks," he said — " my first." 
We hurried the stricken youth on and pitched camp 
below the cabin, and on a minnow branch that slipped 
past low willows and under rhododendrons and 
dropped in happy water-falls into the Breaks, where 
began a vertical turreted ledge, hundreds of feet high, 
that ran majestically on — miles on. 

There Willie at once developed unwonted vim. 
We needed milk and butter and eggs, so he left me to 
hew wood and draw water while he strode back to the 
cabin, and Melissa after them; and he made contracts 
for the same daily — he would go for them himself — 
and hired all Melissa's little brothers and sisters to pick 
blackberries for us. 

Then came the first supper in the woods and 
draughts from the typewriter case, the label of which 

164 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

Willie proceeded to alter, because the level of the 
fluid was sinking, and as a tribute to Melissa. 

" Glass— 1 gal." 

It takes little to make humor in the woods. Fol- 
lowed sweet pipes under the stars, thickening multi- 
tudinously straight overhead, where alone we could 
see them. 

Something was troubling Josh that night and I 
could see that he hesitated about delivering himself — 
but he did. 

" Have you fellows — er — ever noticed — er — that 
when men get out in the woods they — er — at once 
begin to swear?" Each one of us had noticed that 
fact. Josh looked severely at me and severely at Dan 
and at Willie — not observing that we were looking 
severely at him. 

" Well," he said, with characteristic decision, " I 
think you ought to stop it." 

There was a triangular howl of derision. 

"We? "I said. 

"We!" said Dan. 

"We!'' yelled Willie. 

Josh laughed — he had not heard the rattling 
fire of picturesque expletives that he had been turn- 
ing loose on Rock and Ridgling since we left the 
Gap. 

I6S 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

However, we each agreed to be watchful — of the 
others. 

By the by, Willie knocked the ashes from his pipe 
and picked up a pail — the mother's pail in which he 
had brought the milk down to camp. 

" I reckon they'll need this," he said, thoughtfully. 
" Don't you think they'll need this? " I was sure 
they would, and as Willie's colossal shoulders disap- 
peared through the bushes we chuckled, and at the fire 
Sam, the black cook, snickered resj^ectfully. Willie 
did not know the lark habits of the mountaineer. We 
could have told him that Melissa was in bed, but we 
wickedly didn't. He was soon back, and looking 
glum. We chuckled some more. 

That night a snake ran across my breast — I sup- 
pose it was a snake — a toad beat a tattoo on Willie's 
broad chest, a horse got tangled in the guy-ropes. Josh 
and Dan swore sleepily, and long before the sun 
flashed down into our eyes, a mountaineer, Melissa's 
black-headed sire, brought us minnows which he had 
insisted on catching without help. Willie Avondered 
at his anxious spirit of lonely accommodation, but it 
was no secret to the rest of us. The chances were 
that he was a moonshiner, and that he had a " still " 
within a mile of our camp — perhaps within a hundred 
yards; for moonshine stills are always located on little 

1 66 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

running streams like the one into which we dipped our 
heads that morning. 

After breakfast, w^e went down that shaded little 
stream into the Breaks, where, aeons ago, the majestic 
Cumberland met its volcanic conqueror, and, after a 
heaving conflict, was tumbled head and shoulders to 
the lower earth, to let the pent-up waters rush througli 
its shattered ribs, and where the Big Sandy grinds 
through them to-day, with a roar of freedom that once 
must have shaken the stars. It was ideal — sun, wind, 
rock, and stream. The water was a bit milky; there 
were eddies and pools, in sunlight and in shadow, and 
our bait, for a wonder, was perfect — chubs, active 
cold-water chubs and military minnows — sucker- 
shaped little fellows, with one brilliant crimson streak 
from gill to base of tail. And we did steady, faithful 
work — all of us — including Tiger, who, as Willie said, 
was a " fisher-dog to beat the band." But is there 
any older and sadder tale for the sportsman than to 
learn, when he has reached one happy hunting-ground, 
that the game is on another, miles away? Thus the 
Indian's idea of heaven sprang! For years and years 
Josh and I had been planning to get to the Breaks. 
For years we had fished the three forks of the Cum- 
berland, over in Kentucky, with brilliant success, and 
the man who had been to the Breaks always smiled 

167 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

indulgently when we told our tales, and told, in an- 
swer, the marvellous things possible in the wonderful 
Breaks. Now we were at the Breaks, and no sooner 
there than we were ready, in great disgust, to get 
away. We investigated. There had been a drought, 
two years before, and the mountaineers had sledged 
the bass under the rocks and had slaughtered them. 
There had been saw-mills up the river and up its tribu- 
taries, and there had been dynamiting. We found 
catfish a-plenty, but we were not after catfish. We 
wanted that king of mountain waters, the black bass, 
and we wanted him to run from one pound to five 
pounds in weight and to fight, like the devil that he 
is, in the clear cold waters of the Cumberland. 
Nobody showed disappointment more bitter than 
Tiger. To say that Tiger was eager and expectant is 
to underrate that game little sport's intelligence and 
his power to catch moods from his master. At first 
he sat on the rocks, with every shining tooth in his 
head a finished cameo of expectant delight, and he 
watched the lines shaking in the eddies as he would 
watch a hole for a rat, or another dog for a fight. 
When the line started cutting through the water and 
the musical hum of the reel rose. Tiger knew as well as 
his master just what was happening. 

" Let him run, Dan," he would gurgle, delightedly. 
1 68 




At tlu- lirraks. 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

"We all knew plainly that that was what he said. 
" Give him plenty of line. Don't strike yet — not yet. 
Don't you know that he's just running for a rock? 
Now he's swallowing the minnow — head first. Off 
he goes again — now's your time, man, now — wow! " 

When the strike came and the line got taut and the 
rod bent. Tiger would begin to leap and bark at the 
water's edge. As Dan reeled in and the fish would 
flash into the air, Tiger would get frantic. When his 
master played a bass and the fish cut darting circles 
forward and back, with the tip of the rod as a centre 
for geometrical evolutions, Tiger would have sprung 
into the water, if he had not known better. And 
when the bass was on the rocks. Tiger sprang for him 
and brought him to his master, avoiding the hook as 
a wary lad will look out for the sharp horns of a mud- 
cat. But the bass were all little fellows, and Tiger 
gurgled his disgust most plainly. 

That night. Josh and I comforted ourselves, and 
made Dan and Willie unhappy, with tales of what we 
had done in the waters of the Cumberland-^sixty bass 
in one day — four four-pounders in two hours, not to 
mention one little whale that drew the scales down to 
the five-pound notch three hours after I had him from 
the water. We recalled — he and I — how we had 
paddled, dragged, and lifted a clumsy canoe, for four 

169 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

days, down the wild and beautiful Clinch (sometimes 
we had to go ahead and build canals through the rip- 
ples), shooting happy, blood-stirring rapids, but catch- 
ing no fish, and how, down that river, we had foolishly 
done it again. This was the third time we had been 
enticed away from the Cumberland, and then and 
there we resolved to run after the gods of strange 
streams no more. Fish stories followed. Dan re- 
called how Cecil Rhodes got his start in South Africa, 
illustrating thereby the speed of the shark. Rhodes 
was poor, but he brought to a speculator news of the 
Franco-Prussian War in a London newspaper of a date 
five days later than the speculator's mail. The two 
got a corner on some commodity and made large 
money. Rhodes had got his paper from the belly of 
a shore-cast shark that had beaten the mail steamer 
by five round days. That was good, and Willie 
thereupon told a tale that he knew to be true. 

" You know how rapidly a bass grows? " 

We did not know. 

" You know how a bass will use in the same hole 
year after year? " 

That we did know. 

" Well, I caught a yearling once, and I bet a man 
that he would gi'ow six inches in a year. To test it, I 
tied a little tin whistle to his tail. A year later we 

170 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

went and fished for him. The second day I caught 
him," Willie knocked the top-ashes from his pipe 
and puffed silently. 

"AVell?" we said. 

Willie edged away out of reach, speaking softly. 

" That tin whistle had gro\\Ti to a fog-horn." We 
spared him, and he quickly turned to a poetico-scien- 
tific dissertation on birds and flowers in tlie Blue-grass 
and in the mountains, surprising us. He knew, posi- 
tively, what even the great Mr. Burroughs did not 
seem to know a few years ago, that the shrike — the 
butcher-bird — impales mice as well as his feathered 
fellows on thorns, having found a nest in a thorn-tree 
up in the Blue-grass which was a ghastly, aerial, 
Indian-like burying-place for two mice and twenty 
song-sparrows. So, next day, Willie and I turned 
unavailingly to Melissa, whom w^e saw but once speed- 
ing through the weeds along the creek bank for home 
and, with success, to Nature; while the indefatigable 
Josh and Dan and Tiger whipped the all but response- 
less waters once more. 

We reached camp at sunset — dispirited all. Tiger 
refused to be comforted until we turned loose two big 
catfish in a pool of the minnow branch and gave him 
permission to bring them out. With a happy wow 
Tiger sprang for the outsticking point of a horn and 

171 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

with a mad yelp sprang clear of the water. With one 
rub of his pricked nose against the bank, he jumped 
again. Wherever the surface of the water rippled, he 
made a dash, nosing under the grassy clumps where 
the fish tried to hide. Twice he got one clear of the 
water, but it was hard to hold to the slippery, leathery 
skins. In ten minutes he laid both, gasping, on the 
bank. 

Next morning we struck camp. Willie said he 
would go on ahead and let down the fence — which 
was near Melissa's cabin. He was sitting on the 
fence, with a disconsolate pipe between his teeth, when 
we rattled and shook over the stony way up the creek 
— sitting alone. Yet he confessed. He had had a 
brief farewell with Melissa. What did she say? 

" She said she was sorry we were going," said 
modest Willie, but he did not say what he said; and 
he lifted the lid of tlie typewriter case, the label of 
which was slowly emptying to a sad and empty lie. 

" Thus pass the flowers," he said, with a last back- 
ward look to the log-cabin and the black-haired, 
blackberry-stained figure watching at the corner. 
" Such is life — a lick and a promise, and then no 
more." The wagon passed under the hill, and 
Melissa, the maid of the Breaks, had come and Melissa 
had gone forever. 

172 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

Only next day, however — for such, too, is life — the 
aching void in Willie's imagination, and what he was 
pleased to call his heart, was nicely filled again. 

That night we strnck the confluence of Russell's 
Fork and the Pound, where, under wide sycamores, 
the meeting of swift waters had lifted from the river- 
beds a high breach of white sand and had considerately 
overspread it with piles of dry drift-wood. The place 
was ideal — why not try it there? The freedom of 
gypsies was ours, and we did. There was no rain in 
the sky, so we pitched no tent, but slept on the sand, 
under the leaves of the sycamore, and, by the light of 
the fire, we solaced ourselves with the cheery game of 
" draw." It was a happy night, in spite of Willie's 
disappointment with the game. He played with 
sorrow, and to his cost. He was accustomed to table 
stakes; he did not know how to act on a modest fifty- 
cent limit, being denied the noble privilege of " bluff." 

" I was playing once with a fellow I knew slightly," 
he said, reminiscently and as though for self-comfort, 
" and with two others whom I didn't know at all. 
The money got down between me and one of the 
strangers, and when the other stranger dealt the last 
hand my suspicions were aroused. I picked up my 
hand. He had dealt me a full house — three aces and 
a pair. I made up my mind that he had dealt his con- 

173 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

federate four of a kind, and do you know what I did? 
I discarded the pair and actually caught the remain- 
ing ace. When it came to a show-down he had four 
deuces. I scooped in all the gold, pushed over to my 
acquaintance what he had lost — in their presence — 
and left the tahle." Perhaps it was just as well that 
we denied Willie his own game, and thus kept him 
shorn of his strength. 

Next day was hard, faithful, fruitless — Josh and I 
fishing up-stream and Dan and Willie wading down 
the " Pound " — and we came in at dark, each pair 
with a few three-quarter pound bass, only Willie hav- 
ing had a bigger catch. They had struck a mill, Dan 
said, which Willie entered — reappearing at once and 
silently setting his rod, and going back again, to re- 
appear no more. Dan found him in there with his 
catch — a mountain maid, fairer even than Melissa, 
and she was running the mill. 

Dan had hard work to get him away, but Willie 
came with a silent purpose that he unveiled at the 
camp-fire — when he put his rod together. He was 
done fishing for fish; the proper study of mankind 
being man, his proper study, next day, would be the 
maid of the mill, and he had forged his plan. He 
would hire a mule, put on jean trousers, a slouch hat, 
and a homespun shirt, buy a bag of com, and go to the 

174 



To the Breaks of Sandy 

mill. When that bag was ground, he would go out 
and buy another. All his life he had wanted to learn 
the milling business, and, while we fished, he would 
learn. But we had had enough, and were stern. 
We would move on from those hard-fished, fishless 
waters next day. In silent acquiescence Willie made 
for the wooden box and its fluid consolation, and when 
he was through with label and jug, the tale of the 
altered title was doubly true. 

" No gal." 

It takes very little to make humor in the woods. 

We did move on, but so strong is hope and so pow- 
erful the ancient hunting instinct in us all, that we 
stopped again and fished again, with the same result, 
in the Pound. Something was wrong. Human 
effort could do no more. So, after sleep on a high 
hill, through a windstorm, it was home with us, and 
with unalterable decision this time we started, climb- 
ing hills, sliding down them, tooling around the edge 
of steep cliffs — sun-baked, bewhiskered, and happy, in 
spite of the days of hard, hard luck. 

Tiger rode on the camp-chest just in front of me. 
Going up a hill the^wagon jolted, and the dog slipped 
and fell between the wheels. The hind wheel, I saw, 
would pass over the dog's body, and if Tiger had been 
a child, I couldn't have been more numb with horror. 

175 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

The wheel ran squarely over him, crushing him into 
the sand. The little fellow gave one short, brave, sur- 
prised yelp. Then he sprang up and trotted after 
us — unhurt. It was a miracle, easier to believe for 
the reason that that particular hind wheel was a wheel 
of kindly magic. Only an hour before it had run 
squarely over a little haversack in which were a bottle, 
a pipe, and other fragile things, and not a thing was 
broken. I do not believe it would have been possible 
so to arrange the contents and let the wheel run over 
it as harmlessly again. 

Another night, another hot day, and another, and 
we were tooling down into the beautiful little valley, 
toward the sunset and " The Gap " — toward razor, 
bathtub, dinner, Willie's guitar and darky songs, and 
a sound, sweet sleep in each man's own bed — through 
dreams of green hills, gray walls, sharp peaks, and 
clear, swift waters, from which no fish flashed to se- 
ductive fly or crimson-streaked minnow. But with 
all the memories, no more of the Breaks for Josh or 
Dan or for me; and no more, doubtless, for Willie, 
though Melissa be there waiting for him, and though 
the other maid, with the light of mountain waters in 
her eyes, be dreaming of him at her mill. 

After the gods of strange streams we would run no 
more. 

176 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 



Brer Coon in Ole Kentucky 

De ole man coon am a sly ole cues : 

Git erlong, coon-dog, now ! 
An' de lady coon am a leetle bit wuss ; 

Git erlong, coon-dog, now I 

We hunts 'em when de nights gits dark ; 

Git erlong, coon-dog, now ! 
Dey runs when dey hears de big dogs bark ; 

Git erlong, coon-dog, now ! 

But 'deed, Mister Coon, hit's no use to try; 

Git erlong, coon-dog, now ! 
Fer when we comes you's boun' to die ; 

Git erlong, coon-dog, now ! 

THE day was late in autumn. The sun was low, 
and the haze of Indian summer hung like mist 
on the horizon. Crows were rising from fat 
pickings in the blue-gi'ass fields, and stretching away 
in long lines through a yellow band of western light, 
and toward the cliffs of the Kentucky River, where 
they roost in safety the winter long. An hour later 
darkness fell, and we rode forth the same way, some 
fifty strong. 

179 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

There were " young cap'n," as " young marstcr " 
is now called, and his sister Miriam; Korthcott, who 
was from the North, and was my friend; young 
farmers from the neighborhood, with their sisters and 
sweethearts; a party from the county town not far 
away; a contingent from the Iroquois Hunt Club, of 
Lexington ; old Tray, a tobacco tenant from the Cum- 
berland foot-hills; and old Ash, a darky coon-hunter 
who is known throughout the State. 

There were White Child and Black Babe, two 
young coon-dogs which Ash claimed as his own; 
Bulger, a cur that belonged to Tray; young captain's 
favorites, June Bug and Star; several dogs from the 
neighborhood; and two little fox-terriers, trotting to 
heel, which the Major, a veteran, had brought along 
to teach the country folks a new wrinkle in an old 
sport. 

Ash was a ragged, old-time darky with a scraggly 
beard and a caressing voice. He rode a mule with a 
blind bridle and no saddle. In his belt, and hanging 
behind, was an ax-head fixed to a handle of hatchet 
length; the purpose of this was to cut a limb from 
under Br'er Coon when he could not be shaken off, or 
to cut a low entrance into his hole, so that he could 
be prodded out at the top with a sharp stick. In his 
pockets were matches to build a fire, that the fight 

1 80 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

could be seen; at bis side bung a lantern witb wbich 
" to sbine bis eye " wben the coon was treed; and 
under bim was a meal-sack for Br'er Possum, 

Tobacco bad brougbt Tray from tbe foot-bills to tbe 
Blue-grass. His borse was as sorry as Asb's mule, 
and be wore a rusty gray overcoat and a rusty sloucb- 
bat. Tbe forefinger of bis bridle-band was off at tbe 
second joint — a coon's teetb bad nipped it as clean 
as tbe stroke of a surgeon's knife, one nigbt, wben be 
ran into a figbt to pull off a young dog. Tray and 
Asb betrayed a racial inberitance of mutual contempt 
tbat was intensified by tbe rivalry of tbeir dogs. 
From tbese two, tbe bumanity ran up, in tbe matter 
of dress, through tbe young farmers and country girls, 
and through the hunt club, to JSTorthcott, who was 
conventional perfection, and young captain's pict- 
uresque sister, who wore the white slouch-hat of some 
young cavalryman, — the brim pinned up at tbe side 
with the white wing of a pigeon tbat she had shot witb 
her own hand. 

The cavalcade moved over the turf of the front 
woods, out the pike gate, and clattered at a gallop for 
two miles down tbe limestone road. Here old Ash 
called a halt; and he and Tray, and young captain 
and Blackburn, who was tall, swarthy, and typical, 
rode on ahead. I was allowed to follow in order to 

i8i 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

see the dogs work. So was Northcott; but lie pre- 
ferred to stay behind for a while. 

" Keep back thar now," shouted Ash to the crowd, 
" an' keep still ! " So they waited behind while we 
went on. The old darky threw the dogs off in a wood- 
land to the left, and there was dead silence for a while, 
and the mystery of darkness. By and by came a 
short, eager yelp. 



II 

Only two days before, Northcott and I were down 
in the Kentucky mountains fishing for bass in the 
Cumberland, and a gaunt mountaineer was helping 
us catch minnows. 

" Coons is a-gittin' fat," he remarked sententiously 
to another mountaineer, who was lazily following us 
up the branch; " an' they's a-gittin' fat on my corn." 

" You like coons? " I asked. 

" Well, jes gimme all the coon I can eat in three 
days — in three days, mind ye — an' then lay me up in 
bed ag'in a jug o' moonshine — " Words failed him 
there, and he waved his hand. " Them coons kin 
have all o' my corn they kin hold. I'd jes as lieve 
have my corn in coons as in a crib. I keeps my dawgs 
tied up so the coons kin take their time ; but " — he 

182 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

turned solemnly to his companion again — '^ coons 
is a-gittin' fat, an' I'm goin' to turn them dawgs 
loose." 

White moonshine, coons, and sweet potatoes for the 
Kentucky mountaineer; and on through the Blue- 
grass and the Purchase to the Ohio, and no farther — 
red whiskey, coons, and sweet potatoes for the night- 
roving children of Ham. It is a very old sport in the 
State. As far back as 1785, one shouting Methodist 
preacher is known to have trailed a virgin forest for 
old Br'er Coon. He was called Raccoon John Smith, 
and he is doubtless the father of the hunt in Ken- 
tucky. Traced back through Virginia, the history of 
the chase would most likely strike root in the home- 
sickness of certain English colonists for trailing 
badgers of nights in the old country, and sending 
terriers into the ground for them. One night, doubt- 
less, some man of these discovered what a plucky fight 
a certain ring-tailed, black-muzzled, bear-like little 
beast would put up at the least banter; and thereafter, 
doubtless, every man who loved to hunt the badger 
was ready to hunt the coon. That is the theory of a 
distinguished Maryland lawyer and coon-hunter, at 
least, and it is worthy of record. The sport is common 
in Pennsylvania, and also in Connecticut, where the 
hunters finish the coon with a shot-gun; and in IS'ew 

183 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

England, I am told, " drawing " the coon is yet done. 
Br'er Coon is placed in a long, square box or trough, 
and the point is to get a fox-terrier that is game enough 
to go in " and bring him out." That, too, is an in- 
heritance from the English way of badger-fighting, 
which was tried on our American badgers without 
success, as it was usually found necessary, after a short 
fight, to draw out the terrier — dead. Coon-hunting 
is, however, distinctly a Southern sport, although the 
coon is found all over the United States, and as far 
north as Alaska. It is the darky who has made the 
sport Southern. With him it has always been, is now, 
and always will be, a passion. Inseparable are the 
darky and his coon-dog. And nowhere in the South 
is the sport more popular than in Kentucky — with 
mountaineers, negroes, and people of the Blue-grass. 
It is the more remarkable, then, that of all the beasts 
that walk the blue-grass fields, the coon-dog is the 
only one for which the Kentuckian does not claim 
superiority. The Kentucky coon-dog — let his master 
get full credit for the generous concession — is no 
better than the coon-dog of any other State. Perhaps 
this surprising apathy is due to the fact that the coon- 
dog has no family position. A prize was offered in 
1891 by the Blue-grass Kennel Club at Lexington, 
and was won, of course, by a Kentucky dog; but the 

184 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

American Kennel Club objected, and the prize has 
never been offered again. So the coon-dog has no rec- 
ognized breed. He is not even called a hound. He is 
a dog — just a " dawg." He may be cur, fox-terrier, 
fox-hound, or he may have all kinds of grand-parents. 
On one occasion that is worth interjecting he was even 
a mastiff. An Irishman in Louisville owned what he 
called the " brag coon-dog " of the State. There are 
big woods near Louisville, and a good deal of hunting 
for the coon is done in them. A German who lived 
in the same street had a mastiff with the playful habit 
of tossing every cat that came into his yard over the 
fence — dead. The Irishman conceived the idea that 
the mastiff would make the finest coon-dog on earth — 
not excepting his own. Lie persuaded the German to 
go out in the woods with him one night, and he took 
his own dog along to teach the mastiff how to fight. 
The coon was shaken out of the tree. The coon-dog 
made for the coon, and the mastiff made for the coon- 
dog, and reached him before he reached the coon. In 
a minute the coon-dog was dead, the coon was making 
off through the rustling maize, and Celt and Teuton 
were clinched under the spreading oak. Originally, 
the coon-dog was an uncompromising cur, or a worth- 
less fox-hound that had dropped out of his pack; and 
most likely darkies and boj^s had a monopoly of the 

i8s 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

sport in the good old days when the hunting was 
purely for the fun of the fight, and when trees were 
cut down, and nobody took the trouble to climb. 
When the red fox drove out the gray, the newer and 
swifter hounds — old Lead's descendants — took away 
the occupation of the old fox-hound, and he, in turn, 
took the place of the cur; so that the Kentucky coon- 
dog of to-day is usually the old-fashioned hound that 
was used to hunt the gray fox, the " pot-licker " — the 
black-and-tan, long-eared, rat-tailed, flat-bellied, splay- 
footed " pot-licker." Such a hound is a good trailer; 
he makes a good fight, and there is no need in the hunt 
for special speed. Recently the terrier has been in- 
troduced to do the fighting when the coon has been 
trailed and treed, because he is a more even match, 
and as game as any dog; and, thanks to Mr. Belmont's 
" J^ursery " in the Blue-grass, the best terriers are 
accessible to the Kentucky hunters who want that 
kind of fight. 

But it is the hunt with an old darky, and old coon- 
dogs, and a still, damp, dark night, that is dear to the 
Southern hunter's heart. It is the music of the dogs, 
the rivalry between them, the subtleties of the trail, 
and the quick, fierce fight, that give the joy then. 
Only recently have the ladies begun to take part in the 
sport, and, naturally, it is growing in favor. Coons 

1 86 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

are plentiful in the Blue-grass, even around the towns, 
where truck-patches are convenient, and young 
turkeys and chickens unwary. For a coon, unless 
hard-pressed, will never go up any tree but his 
own; and up his own tree he is usually safe, for 
trees are now too valuable to be cut down for 
coons. 

It is the ride of only a few hours from the moun- 
tains to the lowland Blue-grass, and down there, too, 
coons were getting fat; so on the morning of the 
second day Northcott and I woke up in the ell of an 
old-fashioned Blue-grass homestead — an ell that was 
known as the " office " in slavery days — and old Ash's 
gray head was thrust through the open door. 

" Breakfast 'mos' ready. Young cap'n say you 
mus' git up now." 

Crackling flames were leaping up the big chimney 
from the ash kindling-wood and hickory logs piled in 
the enormous fireplace, and Northcott, from his bed 
in the corner, chuckled with delight. 

That morning the Northerner rode through peace- 
ful fields and woodlands, and looked at short-horn 
cattle and Southdown sheep and thorough-bred horses, 
and saw the havoc that tobacco was bringing to the 
lovely land. When he came back dinner was ready — 
his first Southern dinner. 

187 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

After dinner, Miriam took him to feed young cap- 
tain's pet coon, the Governor, and Black Eye, a fox- 
terrier that was the Governor's best friend — both in 
the same plate. The Governor was chained to an old 
apple-tree, and slept in a hole which he had enlarged 
for himself about six feet from the ground. Let a 
strange dog appear, and the Governor would retreat, 
and Black Eye attack; and after the fight the Gov- 
ernor would descend, and plainly manifest his grati- 
tude with slaps and scratches and bites of tenderness. 
The Governor never looked for anything that was 
tossed him, but would feel for it with his paws, never 
lowering his blinking eyes at all. Moreover, he was 
a dainty beast, for lie washed everything in a basin of 
water before he ate it. 

" Dey eats ever'thing, boss," said old Ash's soft 
voice; "but dey likes crawfish best. I reckon coon 
'11 eat dawg, jes as dawg eats coon. But dawg won't 
eat 'possum. Gib a dawg a piece o' 'possum meat, 
and he spit it out, and look at you mean and reproach- 
ful. Knowin' 'possum lack I do, dat sut'nly do look 
strange. Hit do, mon, shore. 

" An' as fer fightin' — well, I ain't never seed a coon 
dat wouldn't fight, an' I ain't never seed nuttin' dat a 
coon wouldn't tackle. Most folks believes dat a 
'possum canH fight. Well, you jes tie a 'possum an' 

1 88 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

coon together by de tails, an' swing 'em over a clothes- 
line, an' when you come back you g-wine find de coon 
daid. 'Possum jes take hole in de throat, an' go to 
sleep — jes like a bull-pup." 

A gaunt figure in a slouch-hat and ragged overcoat 
had slouched in at the yard gate. His eye was blue 
and mild, and his face was thin and melancholy. Old 
Ash spoke to him familiarly, and young captain called 
him Tray. He had come for no reason other than 
that he was mildly curious and friendly; and he 
stopped shyly behind young captain, fumbling with 
the stump of one finger at a little sliver of wood that 
served as the one button to his overcoat, silent, listless, 
gentle, grave. And there the three stood, the pillars 
of the old social structure that the war brought down 
— the slave, the poor white, the master of one and 
the lord of both. Between one and the other the 
chasm was still deep, but they would stand shoulder to 
shoulder in the hunt that night. 

" Dat wind from de souf," said old Ash, as we 
turned back to the house. " Git cloudy bime-by. 
We gwine to git Mister Coon dis night, shore." 

A horn sounded from the quarters soon after 
supper, and the baying of dogs began. Several 
halloos came through the front woods, and soon there 
was the stamping of horses' feet about the yard fence, 

189 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

and much jollj laughter. Girths were tightened, and 
a little later the loud slam of the pike gate announced 
that the hunt was begun. 



Ill 

Br'er Coon he has a bushy tail ; 

Br'er Possum's tail am bar' ; 
Br'er Rabbit's got no tail at all — 

Jes a leetle bunch o' ha'r. 

When the yelp came, Tray's lips opened tri- 
umphantly: 

"Bulger!" 

" Rabbit," said old Ash, contemptuously. 

Bulger was a young dog, and only half broken ; but 
every hunter knew that each old dog had stopped in 
his tracks and was listening. There was another yelp 
and another; and the old dogs harked to him. But 
the hunters sat still to give the dogs time to trail, as 
hunters always do. Sometimes they will not move 
for half an hour, unless the dogs are going out of hear- 
ing. Old Ash was humming calmly: 

Coony in de tree ; 

'Possum in de holler ; 
Purty gal at my house, 

Fat as she kin waller. 
190 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

It was Tray's dog, and old Ash could afford to be 
calm and scornful, for he was without faith. So over 
and over he sang it softly, while Tray's mouth was 
open, and his ear was eagerly cocked to every note of 
the trail. The air was very chilly and damp. The 
moon was no more than a silver blotch in a leaden sky, 
and barely visible here and there was a dim star. On 
every side, the fields and dark patches of woodland 
rolled alike to the horizon, except straight ahead, 
where one black line traced the looping course of 
the river. That way the dogs were running, and the 
music was growing furious. It was too much for 
Tray, who suddenly let out the most remarkable yell 
I have ever heard from human lips. That was a 
signal to the crowd behind. A rumbling started; the 
crowd was striking the hard turnpike at a swift gallop, 
coming on. It was quick work for Bulger, and the 
melancholy of Tray's face passed from under the eager 
light in his eyes, and as suddenly came back like a 
shadow. The music had stopped short, and old Ash 
pulled in with a grunt of disgust. 

" Rabbit, I toF ye," he said again, contemptuously; 
and Tray looked grieved. A dog with a strange 
mouth gave tongue across the dim fields. 

" House cat," said young captain. " That was a 
farm dog. The young dogs ran the cat home." This 

191 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

was true, for just then two of the old dogs leaped the 
fence and crossed the road. 

" They won't hark to him next time," said young 
captain; "Bulger's a liar." A coon-dog is never 
worthless, " no 'count; " he is simply a " liar." Mne 
out of ten young dogs will run a rabbit or a house cat. 
The old dogs will trust a young one once or twice; 
but if he proves unworthy of confidence, they will not 
go to him sometimes when he is really on a coon trail, 
and will have to be called by their masters after the 
coon is treed. As Bulger sprang into the road, old 
Ash objurgated him: 

" Whut you mean, dawg? — you black liah, you! " 
The pain in Tray's face was pathetic. 

"Bulger hain't no liar," he said sturdily. 
" Bulger's jes young." 

Then we swept down the road another mile to an- 
other woodland, and this time I stayed with the crowd 
behind. Young captain had given Northcott his 
favorite saddle-horse and a fat saddle that belonged to 
his father; and Northcott, though a cross-country rider 
at home, was not happy. He was being gently rocked 
sidewise in a maddening little pace that made him look 
as ridiculous as he felt. 

"You haven't ridden a Southern saddle-horse 
before, have you? " said Miriam. 

192 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

" No; I never have." 

" Then you won't mind a few instructions? " 

" No, indeed," he said meekly. 

" Well, press your hand at the base of his neck — 
so — and tighten your reins just a little — now." 

The horse broke step into a " running walk," which 
was a new sensation to IvTorthcott. "We started up the 
pace a little. 

" ;N'ow press behind your saddle on the right side, 
and tighten your rein a little more, and hold it steady 
— so — and he'll rack." The saddler struck a swift 
gait that was a revelation to the Northerner. 

" ]^ow, if you want him to trot, catch him by the 
mane or by the right ear." 

The horse broke his step instantly. 

" Beautiful! " said K"orthcott. " This is my gait." 

" Now wave your hand — so." The animal struck 
an easy lope. 

"Lovely!" 

We swept on. A young countryman who was 
called Tom watched the instruction with provincial 
amusement. 

I was riding young captain's buggy mare, and, try- 
ing her over a log, I learned that she could jump. So, 
later in the night, I changed horses with Northcott — 
for a purpose. 

193 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

We could hear the dogs trailing around to the right 
now, and the still figures of Ash and Tray halted us 
in the road. Presently the yelps fused into a musical 
chorus, and then a long, penetrating howl came 
through the woods that was eloquent to the knowing. 
" Dar's old Star," said Ash, kicking his mule in the 
side; "an' dar's a coon! " 

We had a dash through the woods at a gallop then, 
and there was much dodging of low branches, and 
whisking around tree-trunks, and a great snapping of 
brush on the ground; and we swept out of the shadows 
of the woodland to a white patch of moonlight, in the 
centre of which was a little walnut-tree. About this 
the dogs were sitting on their haunches, baying up at 
its leafless branches; and there, on the first low limb, 
scarcely ten feet from the ground and two feet from 
the trunk, sat, not ring-tailed Br'er Coon, but a fat, 
round, gray 'possum, paying no attention at all to the 
hunters gathering under him, but keeping each of his 
beady black eyes moving with nervous quickness from 
one dog to another. Old Ash was laughing triumph- 
antly in the rear. " Black Babe foun' dat 'possum. 
Dis nigger's got dawgs! " Northcott was called up, 
that he might see; and young captain rode under the 
little fellow, and, reaching up, caught him by the tail, 
the 'possum making no effort at all to escape, so en- 

194 



Br'er Coon in 01c Kentucky 

grossed was he with the dogs. Old Ash, with a wide 
smile, dropped him into the mouth of his meal-sack. 

'^ Won't he smother in there," asked ISTorthcott, 
" or eat his way out? " 

Old Ash grinned. " He'll be dar when we git 
home." Then he turned to Tray. " I gwine to let 
you have dis 'possum in de morning, to train dat liah 
Bulger." 

There is no better way to train a young dog than to 
let him worry a 'possum after he has found it ; and this 
is not as cruel as it seems. Br'er 'Possum knows how 
to roll up in a ball and protect his vitals; and when 
you think he is about dead, he will unroll, but little 
hurt. 

The clouds were breaking now; the moon showed 
full, the air had grown crisp, and the stars were thick 
and brilliant. For half an hour we sat on a hill-side 
w^aiting, and, for some occult reason, the Major was 
becoming voluble. 

" Now, old Tray there thinks he's hunting the coon. 
So does old Ash. I reckon that we are all laboring 
under that painful delusion. A^Hiereas the truth is 
that the object of this hunt is attained. I refer, sir, 
to that 'possum." He turned to Northcott. " You 
have never eaten 'possum ? Well, sir, it is a very easy 
and dangerous habit to contract if the 'possum is 

195 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

properly prepared. I venture to say, sir, that nawth 
of Mason and Dixon's line the gastronomical possibili- 
ties of the 'possum are utterly unknown. How do I 
prepare him? Well, sir " 

The 'Major was interrupted by a mighty yell from 
old Ash ; and again there was a great rush through the 
low undergrowth, over the rocky hill-side, and down a 
long, wooded hollow. This time the old negro's 
favorites, White Child and Black Babe, were in the 
lead; and old Ash flapped along like a windmill, with 
every tooth in sight. 

"Go it, Black Babe! Go it, my White Chile! 
Gord! but dis nigger's got dawgs! " 

Everybody caught his enthusiasm, and we could 
hear the crowd thundering behind us. I was next 
Ash, and all of a sudden the old darky came to a quick 
stop, and caught at his nose with one hand. A pow- 
erful odor ran like an electric shock through the air, 
and a long howl from each dog told that each had 
started from some central point on his own responsi- 
bility. The Major raised his voice. "Stop!" he 
shouted. " Keep the ladies back — keep 'em ^way 
back!" 

"Gord!" said old Ash once more; and Tray lay 
down on his horse's neck, helpless with laughter. 

The Major was too disgusted for words. When 
196 







ami^m^ 



n- 



s 



c 

c 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

we crossed the road, and paused again, he called in a 
loud voice for me to advance and see the dogs work. 
Then he directed me to call Northcott forward for the 
same purpose. Blackburn came, too. A moment 
later I heard young captain shouting to the crowd, 
" Keep back, keep back! " and he, too, spurred around 
the bushes. 

"Where are those dogs?" he asked with mock 
anxiety. 

The neck of the Major's horse was lengthened 
peacefully through the rails of a ten-foot fence, and 
at the question the veteran whisked a bottle of old 
Jordan from his hip. 

" Here they are." 

Then followed an eloquent silence that turned the 
cold October air into the night-breath of June, that 
made the mists warm, the stars rock, and the moon 
smile. Once more we waited. 

"How do I prepare him, sir?" said the Major. 
" You skin the coon; but you singe off the hair of the 
'possum in hot wood-ashes, because the skin is a deli- 
cacy, and must not be scalded. Then parbile him. 
This takes a certain strength away, and makes him 
more tender. Then put him in a pan, with a good 
deal of butter, pepper, and salt, and a little brown 
flour, leaving the head and tail on. Then cut little 

197 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

slips along the ribs and haunches, and fill them with 
red-pepper pods. Baste him with gravy while brown- 
ing "—the Major's eyes brightened, and once at least 
his lips smacked distinctly— " cook sweet potatoes 
around him, and then serve him smoking hot- 
though some, to be sure, prefer him cold, like roast 
pork. You must have dodgers, very brown and very 
crisp; and, of course, raw persimmons (persimmons are 
ripe in 'possum-time, and 'possums like persimmons— 
the two are inseparable); pickles, chow-chow, and 
tomato ketchup; and, lastly, pumpkin-pie and a second 
cup of coffee. Then, with a darky and a banjo, a 
mint-julep and a pipe, you may have a reasonable ex- 
pectation of being, for a little while, happy. And 

speaking of julep " 

Just then two dim forms were moving out of sight 
behind some bushes below us, and the Major shouted: 

" Tawm! " 

The two horsemen turned reluctantly, and when 
Tom was near enough the Major asked a whispered 
question, and got an affirmative response. 

" All right," added the Major, with satisfaction. 
" Shake hands with Mr. Northcott. I hereby pro- 
mote you, sir, to the privilege of staying in front and 
watching the dogs work." 

Northcott's face was distinctly flushed after this 
198 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

promotion, and he confessed afterward to an insane 
desire to imitate the Major's speech and Blackburn's 
stately manner. "When we started off again, he posted 
along with careless content, and many sympathized 
with him. 

" Oh, this is just what I like," he said. " Every- 
body posts up North— even the ladies." 
" Dear me! " said several. 

*' I reckon that kind of a horse is rather better for 
an inexperienced rider," said Tom, friendly, and 
Northcott smiled. Somebody tried a horse over a log 
a few minutes later, and the horse swerved to one side. 
N'orthcott wheeled, and started for a bigger log at a 
gallop; and the Httle mare rose, as if on wings, two 
feet higher than was necessary, while Northcott sat 
as if bound to his saddle. 

Then he leaped recklessly into another field, and 
back again. Tom was speechless. 

It was after midnight now, and the moon and stars 
were passing swiftly overhead; but the crowd started 
with undiminished enthusiasm when a long howl an- 
nounced that some dog had treed. This time it was 
no mistake. At the edge of the woodland sat the old 
darky at the foot of the tree to keep the coon from 
coming down, while the young dogs were bouncing 
madly about him, and baying up into the tree. It was 

199 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

curious to watcli old Star when lie arrived. He would 
take no pup's word for the truth, but circled the tree 
to find out whether the coon had simply " marked " 
it; and, satisfied on that point, he settled down on his 
haunches, and, with uplifted muzzle, bayed with the 

rest. 

''I knowed dis was coon," said Ash, rising. 

'' 'Possum circles; coon runs straight." 

Then the horses were tied, and everybody gathered 

twigs and branches and dead wood for a fire, which 

was built half-way between the trunk and the tips of 

the overhanging branches; and old Ash took off his 

shoes, his coat, and his " vest," for no matter how cold 

the night, the darky will climb in shirt, socks, and 

trousers. If he can reach around the tree, he will go 

up like a monkey; if he can't, he will go to the outer 

edge, and pull a bough down. In this case he could 

do neither, so young captain stood with his hands 

braced against the tree, while the old darky climbed 

up his back, and stamped in sock feet over his head 

and shoulders. Tray held the fence-rail alongside, 

and, with the aid of this, the two boosted Ash to the 

first limb. Then the men formed a circle around the 

tree at equal distances, each man squatting on the 

ground, and with a dog between his knees. The 

Major held his terriers; and as everybody had seen the 



200 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

usual coon-fight, it was agreed tliat tlie terriers should 
have the first chance. Another darky took a lantern, 
and walked around the tree with the lantern held just 
behind one ear, " to shine the coon's eye." As the 
lantern is moved around, the coon's eye follows, and its 
greenish-yellow glow betrays his whereabouts. 

" Dar he is! " shouted the negro with the lantern; 
" 'way up higher." And there he was, on the ex- 
tremity of a long limb. Old Ash climbed slowly until 
he could stand on the branch below and seize with both 
hands the limb that the coon lay on. 

"Look out dar, now; hyeh he comes!" Below, 
everybody kept perfectly quiet, so that the dogs could 
hear the coon strike the ground if he should sail over 
their heads and light in the darkness outside the circle 
of fire. Ash shook, the coon dropped straight, and the 
game little terriers leaped for him. Br'er Coon 
turned on his back, and it was slap, bite, scratch, and 
tear. One little terrier was caught in the nose and 
spun around like a top, howling; but he went at it 
again. For a few minutes there was an inextricable 
confusion of a brown body, snapping white teeth, and 
outshooting claws, with snarling, leaping little black- 
and-tan terriers, and much low, fierce snarling. The 
coon's wheezing snarl was curious : it had rage, whin- 
ing terror, and perfect courage, all in one. Then 

20 1 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

came one scream, penetrating and piteous, and the 

fight was done. 

" Git liim? " yelled Asli from np in the tree. 

" Yep." 

" Well, dar's anudder one up hyeh. Watch out, 

now!" 

The branches rattled, but no coon dropped, and we 
could hear Ash muttering high in the air, '' I bet ef I 
had a black-snake whip I'd lif you." 

Then came a pistol-shot. Ash had fired close to 
him to make him jump; but Br'er Coon lay close to 
the limb, motionless. 

- I got to cut him off, I reckon," Ash called; and 
whack! whack! went the blows of his httle ax. 

" Whoop! " 

The branch crackled; a dark body, flattened, and 
with four feet outstretched, came sailing down, and 
struck the earth-thud! Every dog leaped for hmi, 
growling; every man yelled, and pressed close about 
the heap of wi-ithing bodies; and there was pande- 
monium. A coon can fight eight dogs better than he 
can fight three, for the eight get in one another's way. 
Foot by foot the game little beast fought his way to 
the edge of the cliff, and the whole struggling, snarl- 
ing, snapping mass rolled, with dislodged dirt and 
clattering stones, down to the edge of the river, with 

202 



Brer Coon in 01c Kentucky 

the yelling hunters slipping and sliding after them. 
A great splash followed, and then a sudden stillness. 
One dog followed the coon into the water, and after a 
sharp struggle, and a howl of pain, turned and made 
for the bank. It was Bulger — the last to give up the 
fight. Br'er Coon had escaped, and there w^as hardly 
a man who was not glad. 

" Eeckon Bulger can fight, ef he is a liar," said 
Tray — " which he ain't." 

The stars were sinking fast, and we had been five 
hours in the saddle. Everybody was tired. Down in 
a ravine young captain called a halt when the dogs 
failed to strike another trail. The horses were tied, 
and an enormous fire was built, and everybody gath- 
ered in a great circle around it. Somebody started a 
song, and there was a jolly chorus. A little picca- 
ninny was pushed into the light, bashful and 
hesitating. 

" Shake yo' foot, boy," said old Ash, sternly; and 
the nimble feet were shaken to " Juba " and " My 
Baby Loves Shortenin'-bread." It was a scene worth 
remembering — the upshooting flames, the giant shad- 
ows leaping into the dark woods about, the circle of 
young girls with flushed faces and loosened hair, and 
strapping young fellows cracking jokes, singing songs, 
and telling stories. 

203 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

It was all simple and genuine, and it pleased Nortli- 
cott who was one of the many Northerners to whom 
everything Southern appeals strongly-who had come 
South prepared to like everything Southern: darkies, 
darky songs; Southern girls, Southern songs, old-fash- 
ioned in tune and sentiment; Southern voices, South- 
ern accent, Southern ways; the romance of the life and 
the people; the pathos of the war and its ruins; the 
simple, kindly hospitahty of the Southern home. 

Nobody noticed that Tray was gone, and nobody 
but Tray had noticed that Bulger was the only one of 
the dogs that had not gathered in to the winding of old 
Ash's horn. A long howl high on the cliff made 
known the absence of both. It was Bulger; and agam 
came Tray's remarkable yell. Not an old dog moved. 
Again came the howl, and again the yell; and then 
Tray was silent, though the howls went on. Another 
song was started, and stopped by old Ash, who sprang 
to his feet. A terrific fight was going on up on the 
cliff. We could hear Bulger's growl, the unmistak- 
able snarl of a coon, a series of cheering yells, and the 
cracking of branches, as though Tray were tumbhng 
out of a tree. Every dog leaped from the fire, and all 
the darkies but old Ash leaped after them. There 
was a scramble up the cliff; and ten minutes later Tray 
came into the firelight with a coon in one hand, and 

204 



Br'er Coon in Ole Kentucky 

poor Bulger limping after him, bleeding at the throat, 
and with a long, bloody scratch down his belly. 

" Bulger treed him, an' I seed the coon 'twixt me 
an' the moon. I hollered fer you, an' you wouldn't 
come, so I climbed up an' shuk him out. When I got 
down the coon was dead. Bulger don't run polecats," 
he said with mild scorn, and turned on Ash: "I 
reckon you'd better not call Bulger a liar no more." 
And the blood of the Anglo-Saxon told, for Ash made 
no answer. 

It was toward morning now. Only one white star 
was hanging where the rest had gone down. There 
was a last chorus — " My Old Kentucky Home ": 

We'll hunt no more for the 'possum an' the coon. 

And then, at a swift gallop, we thundered ten miles 
along the turnpike — home. The crowd fell away, 
and day broke as we neared young captain's roof. 
The crows were flying back from the cliffs to the blue- 
grass fields, and the first red light of the sun was 
shooting up the horizon. Northcott was lifting 
Miriam from her saddle as I rode into the woods; and 
when I reached the yard fence they were seated on the 
porch, as though they meant to wait for the sunrise. 
At the foot of the apple-tree were the Governor and 
Black Eye, playing together like kittens. 

205 



Civilizing the Cumberland 



^_ 







^ ^^( 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

HALF a century ago the Southern mountaineer 
was what he is now, in the main — truthful, 
honest, courageous, hospitable — and more: 
he was peaceable and a man of law. During the last 
fifteen years, fact and fiction have made his lawless- 
ness broadly known ; and yet, in spite of his moonshin- 
ing, his land-thie\dng, and his feuds, I venture the 
paradox that he still has at heart a vast respect for the 
law; and that, but for the war that put weapons in his 
Anglo-Saxon fists, murder in his heart, and left him 
in his old isolation; but for the curse of the revenue 
service that criminalizes the innocent, and the system 
of land laws that sometimes makes it necessary for 
the mountaineer of Kentucky and Virginia, at least, 
to practically steal his own home — he would be a law- 
abiding citizen to-day. But he is not law-abiding, 
and, therefore, the caption above these words. 

Of course, the railroad comes first as an element of 
civilization; but unless the church and the school, in 

209 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

the ratio of several schools to each church, quickly 
follow, the railroad does the mountaineer little else 
than great harm. Even with the aid of these three, 
the standards of conduct of the outer world are reared 
slowly. A painful process of evolution has been the 
history of every little mountain-town that survived 
the remarkable mushroom growth which, within the 
year of 1889-90, ran from Pennsylvania to Alabama 
along both bases of the Cumberland. With one vivid 
exception: in one of these towns, civilization forged 
ahead of church, school, and railroad. The sternest 
ideals of good order and law were set up at once and 
maintained with Winchester, pistol, policeman's billy, 
and whistle. It was a unique experiment in civiliza- 
tion, and may prove of value to the lawful among the 
lawless elsewhere; and the means to the end were 

unique. 

In this town, certain young men— chiefly Virgin- 
ians and blue-grass Kentuckians— simply formed a 
volunteer police-guard. They enrolled themselves as 
county policemen, and each man armed himself— 
usually with a Winchester, a revolver, a billy, a belt, 
a badge, and a whistle— a most important detail of 
the accoutrement, since it was used to call for help. 
They were lawyers, bankers, real-estate brokers, news- 
paper men, civil and mining engineers, geologists, 

2IO 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

speculators, and several men of leisure. Nearly all 
were in active business — as long as there was business 
— and most of them were college graduates, represent- 
ing Harvard, Yale, Princeton, the University of Vir- 
ginia, and other Southern colleges. Two were great- 
grandsons of Henry Clay, several bore a like relation 
to Kentucky governors, and, with few exceptions, the 
guard represented the best people of the blue-grass of 
one State and the tide-water country of the other. 
All served without pay, of course, and, in other words, 
it was practically a police-force of gentlemen who did 
the rough, every-day work of policemen, without swerv- 
ing a hair's-breadth from the plain line of the law. 
These young fellows guarded the streets, day and 
night, when there was need ; they made arrests, chased 
and searched for criminals, guarded jails against mobs, 
cracked toughs over the head with billies, lugged them 
to the " calaboose," and appeared as witnesses against 
them in court next morning. They drilled faithfully, 
and such was the discipline that a whistle blown at 
any hour of day or night would bring a dozen armed 
men to the spot in half as many minutes. In time, a 
drunken man was a rare sight on the streets; the quiet 
was rarely disturbed by a disorderly yell or a pistol- 
shot, and I have seen a crowd of moTintaineers, wildly 
hilarious and flourishing bottles and pistols as they 

211 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

came in from the hills, take on the meekness of lambs 
when they crossed the limits of that little mountain- 
town. I do not believe better order was kept anywhere 
in the land. It was, perhaps, the only mountain-town 
along the border where a feud, or a street fight of 
more than ten minutes' duration, was impossible. Be- 
ing county policemen, the guards extended their 
operations to the limits of the county, thirty miles 
away, and in time created a public sentiment fearless 
enough to convict a certain desperado of murder; then 
each man left his business and, in a body, the force 
went to the county-seat, twenty miles away, and stayed 
there for a month to guard the condemned man and 
prevent his clan from rescuing him — thus making pos- 
sible the first hanging that ever took place in that 
region. Later, they maintained a fund for the proper 
prosecution of criminals, and I believe that any man 
in the county, if guilty of manslaughter, would have 
selected any spot south of Mason and Dixon's line 
other than his own county-seat for his trial. Indeed, 
the enthusiasm for the law was curiously contagious. 
Wild fellows, who would have been desperadoes them- 
selves but for the vent that enforcing the law gave 
to their energies, became the most enthusiastic mem- 
bers of the guard. In other parts of the county, natives 
formed similar bands and searched for outlaws. Sim- 



212 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

ilar organizations were formed in other '' boom " towns 
round about; so that over in the Kentucky mountains, 
a hundred miles away, there is to-day another volunteer 
police-guard at the seat of what was perhaps the most 
lawless county in the State, and once the seat of a des- 
perate feud. This was formed at the suggestion of one 
of our own men, a young and well-known geologist. 
So that, at that time, it looked as though the force that 
might one day put down lawlessness in the Southern 
mountains was getting its impulse from the nerve, good 
sense, and public spirit of two or three young blue- 
grass Kentuekians who had gone over into the moun- 
tains of Virginia to make their fortunes from iron, 
coal, and law. 

For all this happened at " the Gap," which is down 
in the southwestern comer of old Virginia, and about 
eight miles from the Kentucky line. There Powell's 
Mountain runs its mighty ribs into the Cumberland 
range with such humiliating violence that the Cumber- 
land, turned feet over head by the shock, has meekly 
given up its proud title and suffered somebody to dub 
it plain Stone Mountain ; and plain Stone Mountain it 
is to-day — down sixty miles to Cumberland Gap. At 
the point of contact and from the bases of both ranges, 
Powell's Valley starts on its rolling way southward. 
Ten miles below, Roaring Fork has worn down to 

213 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

water-level a wild cleft tlirougli Stone Mountain and 
into tlie valley; and the torrent is still lashing the 
yielding feet of great cliffs and tumbling past ravines 
that are dark in winter with the evergTeen of laurel 
and rhododendron, and lighted in summer with the 

bloom. 

On the other side, South Fork drops seven hundred 
feet of waterfalls from Thunderstruck Knob, and the 
two streams sweep toward each other like the neck 
of a lute and, like a lute, curve away again, to come 
together at last and bear the noble melody of Powell's 
Kiver down the valley. The neck is not over two hun- 
dred yards wide, and, in the heartlike peninsula and 
from ten to twenty feet above the running streams, is 
^he town— all straightaway, but for the beautiful rise ^ 
of Poplar Hill, which sinks slowly to a level again. 

All this— cleft, river, and little town— is known far 
and wide as " the Gap." Through the Gap and on the 
north side of Stone Mountain, are rich veins of pure 
coking coal and not an ounce of iron ore; to the south 
is plenty of good ore and not an ounce of coal; the cliffs 
between are limestone; and water— the third essential 
to the making of iron— runs like a mill-race between. 
This juxtaposition of such raw materials brought m 
the outside world. Nearly twenty years ago, a wise 
old Pennsylvanian bought an empire of coal and tim- 

214 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

ber-lancl through the Gap. Ten years ago the shadow 
of the " boom " started southward — for the boom is a 
shadow, and whatever of light there be in it is as a 
flash of lightning, and with a wake hardly less destruc- 
tive. The Gap was strategic, and there was no such 
site for a town in a radius of a hundred miles. Twelve 
railroads were surveyed to the point, and in poured 
the outside world to make the town — civil and mining 
engineers, surveyors, coal operators, shrewd investors, 
reckless speculators, land-sharks; lawyers, doctors, 
store-keepers, real-estate agents; curb-stone brokers, 
saloon-keepers, gamblers, card-sharps, railroad hands — 
all the flotsam and jetsam of the terrible boom. 

The Kentuckians came first, and two young lawyers 
— Logan and Macfarlan I shall call them — blazed the 
way; one, for the same reason, perhaps, that led his 
forefather, Henry Clay, to Kentucky; the other, who 
was of a race of pioneers, Indian-fighters, lawyers, and 
statesmen, because he was, in a measure, a reversal to 
the first ancestor who penetrated the Western wilder- 
ness. Indeed they and the young Kentuckians, who 
came after them, took the same trail that their fathers 
had taken from Virginia — going to make their for- 
tunes from lands that the pioneers had passed over as 
worthless. It was these two young men who took the 
helm of aifairs and ran the town — as a steersman 

215 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

runs a ship — into the calm waters of good order and 

law. 

It was quiet enough in the beginning, for, besides 
the cottage set in rhododendron-bushes along the deep 
bank of South Fork— and turned into a lawyer's office 
—there was only a blacksmith's shop, one store, one 
farm-house, and a little frame hotel—'' The Grand 
Central Hotel." But, for half a century, the Gap had 
been the chief voting-place in the district. Here were 
the muster-days of war-times, and at the mouth of the 
Gap camped Captain Mayhall Wells and his famous 
Army of the Callahan. Here was the only store, the 
only grist-mill, the only woollen-mill, in the region. 
The Gap was, in consequence, the chief gathering- 
place of people for miles around. Here in the old days 
met the bullies of neighboring counties, and here was 
fought a famous battle between a famous bully of Wise 
and a famous bully of Lee. Only, in those days, the 
men fought with nature's weapons — with all of them 
—and, after the fight, got up and shook hands. 
Here, too, was engendered the hostility between the 
hill-dwellers of Wise and the valley men of Lee; so 
that the Gap had ever been characterized by a fine 
spirit of personal liberty, and any wild oats that were 
not sown elsewhere in that region, usually sprouted at 
the Gap. So, too, when the boom started, the uew- 

216 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

comers, disliked ou their own account as interloji- 
ers, shared this local hostility, which got expression 
usually on Saturday afternoons in the exhilaration of 
moonshine, much yelling and shooting and banter- 
ing, an occasional fist-fight, and, sometimes, in a 
usually harmless interchange of shots. But it was 
the mountain-brother who gave the Kentuckians most 
trouble at first. Sometimes the Kentucky feudsmen 
would chase each other over Black Mountain and into 
the Gap. Sometimes a band of them on horseback — 
"■ wild jayhawkers from old Kanetuck," they used to 
be called — would be passing through to " Commence- 
ment " at a mountain-college down the valley, and 
there would be high jinks indeed. They would halt 
at the Gap and " load up," as the phrase was — with 
moonshine; usually it was a process of reloading. 
Then they would race their horses up and dowm the 
street. 

Sometimes they would quite take the town, and the 
store-keepers would close up and go to the woods to 
wait for the festi^dties to come to a natural end. This 
was endured because it was only periodical, and be- 
cause, apparently, it couldn't be cured. 

Later on, after the speculators had pooled their lands 
and laid out the coming town, and the human stream 
began to trickle in from the outer world, an enterpris- 

217 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

ing Hoosier came in and established a brick-plant. He 
employed a crowd of Tennessee mountaineers, who 
worked with their pistols buckled around them. By 
and by came a strike, and, that night, the hands shot 
out the lights and punctured the chromos in the board- 
ing-house. Then they got sticks, clubs, knives, and 
pistols, and marched up through town, intimidating 
and threatening. 

Verbal, the town constable, tackled one of them 
valiantly, shouting at the same time for help. For ten 
minutes he shouted and fought, and then, once again, 
his voice rose: " I've fit an' I've hollered fer help," he 
cried, " an' I've hollered fer help an' I've fit— an' I've 
fit agin. Now this town can go to h— 1." And he 
tore off his badge and threw it on the ground, and went 
off, weeping. 

Next morning, which was Sunday, the brick-yard 
gang took another triumphant march through town, 
and when they went back, Logan and Macfarlan, his 
partner, called for volunteers to go down and put the 
whole crowd under arrest. To Logan's disgust, only a 
few seemed willing to go, but when the few, who 
would go, started, Logan, leading them, looked back 
from the top of Poplar Hill, and the whole town 
seemed to be strung out behind him. Below the hill, 
he saw the toughs drawn up in two bodies for battle, 

218 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

and, as he led the joiiiig fellows toward them, the 
Ploosier rode out at a gallop, waving his hands and 
beside himself with anxiety and terror. 

"Don't! don't!" he shouted. " Somebody'll get 
killed. Wait— they'll give up!" So Logan halted 
and the Hoosier rode back. After a short parley, he 
came up to say that the strikers would give up, and 
when Logan started again, one party dropped their 
clubs, put up their weapons, and sullenly waited, but 
the rest broke and ran. Logan ordered a piu'suit, but 
only three or four were captured. That night the 
Hoosier was delirious over his troubles, and, next day, 
he left orders watli his foreman to close down the plant, 
and rode off to await the passing of the storm. But 
the incident started the idea of a volunteer police-guard 
in Logan's head. A few days later it took definite 
shape. C^onstable Verbal had resigned; he had been 
tired for some time, and wholly inefficient, for when 
he arrested an outsider, the prisoner's companions 
would calmly rescue him and take him home; so that 
the calaboose — as we called the log-cabin jail, weakly 
stockaded and with a thin-walled guard-room adjoin- 
ing — was steadily as empty as a gourd. 

A few nights later, trouble came up in the chief 
store of the town. Two knives and two pistols were 
whipped out, and the proprietor blew out the light and 

219 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

astutely got under the counter. When the combatants 
scrambled outside, he locked the door and crawled out 
the back window. The next morning a courageous, 
powerful fellow named Youell took up Verbal's badge 
and his office, and that afternoon he had some pro- 
fessional service to perform in the same store. A local 
tough was disorderly, and Youell warned him. 

" You can't arrest me," said the fellow, with an 
oath, but before his lips closed, Youell had him by the 
collar. His friends drew up in a line and threatened 
to kill the constable if he went through. Youell had 
not spoken a word and, without a word now, he pushed 
through, hauling his man after him. 

The friends followed close with knives and pistols 
drawn, cursing and swearing that the man should not 
be jailed. The constable was wdiite, silent, and firm, 
but he had to stop in front of the little law office where 
Logan happened to be looking out of the window. 
Logan went to the door. 

" Look here, boys," he said, quietly, and with the 
tone of the peacemaker, " let's not have any row. 
Let him go on to the Mayor's office. If he isn't guilty, 
the Mayor will let him go ; and if he is, the Mayor will 
let him give bond. There's no use having a row. Let 
him go on." 

Now Logan, to the casual eye, appeared no more 
220 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

than the ordinary man, and even a close observer would 
have seen no more than that his face was thoughtful, 
that his eye was blue and singularly clear and fearless, 
and that he was calm with a calmness that might come 
from anything else than stolidity of temperament — and 
that, by the way, is the self-control which counts most 
against the unruly passions of other men — but any- 
body near Logan, at a time when excitement was high 
and a crisis was imminent, would have felt the result- 
ant of forces emanating from the man, that were be- 
yond analysis. 

I have known one other man — his partner, Macfar- 
lan — to possess an even finer quality of courage, since 
it sprang wholly from absolute fearlessness and a Puri- 
tanical sense of duty, and was not aided by Logan's 
pure love of conflict, but I have never seen another 
man in whom this curious power over rough men was 
so marked. 

" Go on, Youell," said Logan, more quietly than 
ever; and Youell went on with his prisoner — his 
friends following, still swearing, and with their weap- 
ons still in their hands. When the constable and the 
prisoner stepped into the Mayor's ofiice, Logan stepped 
quickly after them and turned on the threshold, with 
his arm across the door. " Hold on, boys," he said, 
still good-naturedly; " the Mayor can attend to this. 

221 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

If you boys want to fight anybody, fight me. I'm un- 
armed and you can whip me easily enough," he added, 
with a laugh, for he knew that passion can sometimes 
be turned with a jest, and that sometimes rowdies are 
glad to turn matters into a jest when they are getting 
too serious. " But you mustn't come in here," he said, 
as though the thing were settled beyond further dis- 
cussion. For one instant — the crucial one, of course 
— the men hesitated, for the reason that so often makes 
superior numbers of no avail among the lawless — the 
lack of a leader of nerve — and Logan held the door 
without another word. But the Mayor, inside, being 
badly frightened, let the prisoner out at once on bond, 
and Logan went on the bond. Greatly disgusted, the 
Kentuckian went back to his office, and then and there 
he and his partner formed the nucleus of an organiza- 
tion that, so far as I know, has never had its parallel. 
There have been gentlemen regulators a-plenty; vigil- 
ance committees of gentlemen ; the Ku-Klux Klan was 
originally composed of gentlemen; but I have never 
heard of another police-guard of gentlemen who did 
the every-day work of the policeman, and hewed with 
precision to the line of town ordinance and common 
law. The organization was military in character. The 
men began drilling and target-shooting at once. Of 
course, Logan was captain; his partner, Macfarlan, 

222 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

was first lieutenant; a Virginian who had lost an arm 
in Pickett's charge at Gettysburg was second lieuten- 
ant, and a brother of mine was third. 

From the beginning, times were lively, and the wise 
captain straightway laid down two inflexible rules for 
the guards. One was never to draw a pistol at all, un- 
less necessary ; never pretend to draw one as a threat 
or to intimidate, and never to draw unless one meant 
to shoot, if need be; the other was always to go in force 
to make an arrest. This was not only proper discretion 
as far as the safety of the guard was concerned, though 
that consideration was little thought of at the time, 
but it showed a knowledge of mountain-character and 
was extraordinarily good sense. It saved the wounded 
pride of the mountaineer — which is morbid. It would 
hurt him unspeakably to have to go home and confess 
that one man had put him in the calaboose, but he 
would not mind telling at all how he was set upon 
and overpowered by several. It was a tribute to his 
prowess, too, that so many were thought necessary. 
Again, he would usually give in to several without re- 
sistance; whereas he would look upon the approach of 
one man as a personal issue and to be met as such. 
This precaution saved much bloodshed, and no mem- 
ber of the guard failed to have opportunities a-plenty 
to show what he could do alone. 

223 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

The first problem was moonshine and its faithful 
ally — " the blind tiger." The " tiger " is a little 
shanty with an ever-open mouth — a hole in the door 
like a post-office window. You place your money on 
the sill, and at the ring of the coin a mysterious arm 
emerges from the hole, sweeps the money away, and 
leaves a bottle of white whiskey. Thus you see no- 
body's face; and thus the owner of the beast is safe, 
and so are you — which you might not be if you saw 
and told. In every little hollow about the Gap a tiger 
had his lair, and these were all bearded at once by a 
petition to the county judge for high-license saloons, 
which was granted. This measure drove the tigers out 
of business and concentrated moonshine in the heart of 
the town, where its devotees were under easy guard. 

Then town ordinances were passed. The wild cen- 
taurs were not allowed to ride up and down the plank 
walks with their reins in their teeth and firing a pistol 
into the ground witli either hand ; they could punctu- 
ate the hotel-sign no more; they could not ride at a 
fast gallop through the streets of the town, and — Lost 
Spirit of American Liberty — they could not even yell ! 
Now when the mountaineer cannot banter with a pis- 
tol-shot and a yell, he feels hardly used indeed. The 
limit of indignity was reached when nobody but a 
policeman was allowed to blow a whistle within the 

224 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

limits of the town, for the very good reason that it 
might be mistaken for a policeman's call and cause 
imnecessary excitement and exertion; or it might not 
be known for a policeman's call when he was really in 
need of help. This ordinance was suggested by Mac- 
farlan, who blew his whistle one night, and without 
waiting for anybody to answer it, put two drunken 
Swedes under arrest. The call was not answered at 
once, and Macfarlan had no time or opportunity to 
blow again — he was too busy reducing the Swedes to 
subjection w'ith his fists. Assistance came just in time 
to prevent them from reducing him. 

These ordinances arrayed the town people against 
the country folks, who thought the town was doing 
what it pleased to prevent the country from doing any- 
thing that it pleased; they stirred up the latent spirit 
of the county feud, and they crystallized the most 
stubborn antagonism with which the guard had to deal 
— hostility in the adjoining county of Lee. 

It was curious to note that with each element of 
disorder there was a climax of incident that established 
the recognized authority of the guard. 

After the shutting down of the brick-yard, its mis- 
chief was merely merged into the general deviltrj^ of 
the to\vn, which was naturally concentrated in the 
high-license saloons, under the leadership of one Jack 

225 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Woods, whose local power for evil and cackling laugh 
seemed to mean nothing else than close personal com- 
munion with Old Nick himself. It was " nuts " to 
Jack to have some drunken customer blow a whistle 
and then stand in his door and laugh at the policemen 
running in from all directions. One day Jack tried it 
himself and Logan ran down. 

" AHio did that? " he asked. Jack felt bold that 
morning. " I blowed it." Logan thought for a mo- 
ment. The ordinance against blowing a whistle had 
not been passed, but he made up his mind that, under 
the circumstances. Jack's blowing was a breach of the 
peace, since the guard had adopted that signal. So 
he said, '' You mustn't do that again." 

Jack had doubtless been going through precisely 
the same mental process, and, on the nice legal point 
involved, he seemed to differ. 

" I'll blow it when I damn please," he said. 

" Blow it again and I'll arrest you," said Logan. 
Jack blew. He had his right shoulder against the cor- 
ner of his door at the time, and, when he raised the 
whistle to his lips, Logan drew and covered him before 
he could make another move. Woods backed slowly 
into his saloon to get behind his counter. Logan saw 
his purpose, and he closed in, taking great risk, as he 
always did, to avoid bloodshed, and there was a strug- 

226 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

gle. Jack managed to get his pistol out, but Logan 
caught him by the wrist and held the weapon away 
so that it was hannless as far as he was concerned ; l)ut 
a crowd was gathering at the door toward which the 
saloon-keeper's pistol was pointed, and he feared that 
somebody out there might be shot; so he called out: 

'' Drop that pistol! " 

The order was not obeyed, and Logan raised his 
right hand high above Jack's head and dropped the 
butt of his weapon on Jack's skull — hard. Jack's 
head dropped back between his shoulders, his eyes 
closed, and his pistol clicked on the floor. A blow is 
a pretty serious thing in that part of the world, and 
it created great excitement. Logan himself was un- 
easy at Jack's trial, for fear that the saloon-keeper's 
friends would take the matter up; but they didn't, 
and, to the surprise of everybody, Jack quietly paid 
his fine, and, thereafter, the guard had little active 
trouble with Jack, though he remained always one 
of its bitterest enemies. This incident made the guard 
master of the Gap, and another extended its reputa- 
tion outside. 

The Howard-Tin-ncr feud was mildly active at that 
time over in the Kentucky Mountains not far away, 
and in the county of Harlan. One morning, a How- 
ard who had killed a Turner fled from the mountains 

227 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

and reached the Gap, where he was wrongly suspected, 
arrested as a horse-thief, and put in the calaboose. A 
band of Turners followed him and demanded that he 
should be given up to them. Knowing that the man 
would be killed, Logan refused, and deputed a brother 
of mine — the third lieutenant — to take the Howard 
for safekeeping to the county jail, twenty miles dis- 
tant. As the Turners w^ere armed only with pistols, the 
third lieutenant armed his men with shot-gims, heavily 
loaded with buckshot, for he knew that mountaineers 
have no love for shot-guns. When the giiards ap- 
proached the calaboose, the Turners were waiting with 
their big pistols drawn and ready to start the fight when 
the Howard should be taken out. But when George 
Turner, the leader — a tall, good-looking, and rather 
chivalrous young fellow, whose death soon afterward 
ended the feud for a while — saw the shot-guns, he 
called a halt, 

" Men," he said, quietly, but so that any could hear 
who wished, " you know that I never back down, and 
if you say so we'll have him or die, but we are not in 
our own State now ; they've got the law and the shot- 
guns on us, and we'd better go slow." The rest readily 
agreed to go slow; so they put up their pistols and 
watched the Howard and his guards ride away. Next 
day some of the guard and two or three Turners inter- 

228 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

changed courtesies at pool-table and bar. It was the 
first time, perhaps, up to that time, that the law had 
ever proved a serious obstacle to either faction in the 
gratification of personal revenge, and it seemed to 
make an impression, judging from the threats of ven- 
geance that the third lieutenant got later from Harlan, 
and the fact that there was no more trouble from the 
'^ wild jayhawkers of old Kanetuck." 

But the chief trouble was with bad men far down 
the valley. It looked to these as though the guard was 
making up trifling excuses to get them in the calaboose, 
and when they discovered that they would always be ar- 
rested and fined if caught riding across the side board- 
walks, or blowing whistles, or shooting off their pistols, 
or racing their horses through the streets, they got to 
waiting until they were mounted and ready to go home 
before they started their mischief. Then they would 
ride at full tilt, doing everything they could that was 
forbidden. Logan broke up this cunning game by 
keeping horses saddled and ready for pursuit, and there 
were many and exciting chases down the valley. After 
several prominent mischief-makers were jailed, to their 
great mortification (for your bad man usually weeps 
copiously when he is captured — from rage as well as 
shame), this, too, was stopped. But great bitterness 
was the result, and some individual hostility was de- 

229 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

veloped that resulted in several so-called " marked 
men " ; that is, certain prominent members of the 
guard were picked out by the bad men for especial at- 
tention if a general fight should come up, and I believe 
that with several of these marked men, human nature 
so far got the better of an abstract motive for order 
and law that the compliment was heartily returned. 
Some of the best and some of the worst were those 
to be in most danger. Even a day was fixed for the 
evening up of old scores — a political gathering on the 
day that Senator Mahone was the speaker, and on that 
day the clash came, the story of which cannot be told 
here. After this clash came the boom swiftly, and 
the guard increased in numbers and prestige. It not 
only unified the best element of the town, but it had 
a strong influence for good on the members themselves 
who were young and hot-blooded. ^Naturally a mem- 
ber of the guard was morally bound not to do anything 
for which he would arrest another man. If a guard 
was unwisely indulgent he was taken to his room and 
kept there — a privilege that was allowed the friends 
of any drunken man, if he was taken out of town be- 
fore he got into mischief. Many fights, and even sev- 
eral duels, were avoided by the new sense of personal 
consistency developed by the duties of the guard. 
Once, for instance, when the boom was at its height, 

230 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

Logan determined to break up the gambling-houses 
of the town. Many of the guard were inveterate poker- 
players ; so Logan merely took around an agreement to 
cease poker — signed by himself, and pointing out the 
inconsistency otherwise involved in the proposed raid. 
Every man signed it, stopped playing, and gambling 
for the time was broken up in town. By and by, some 
of the men down the valley began to see that the guard 
had no personal hostility to gratify, and that, if they 
came to town and behaved themselves, they would 
never be bothered. And they saw that the guard was as 
quick to arrest one of its own men as an outsider, and 
that it was strictly impartial in the discharge of its 
duties. This became evident when the j oiliest and 
most popular man in town was put in the calaboose by 
his friends (he has never touched a drop of liquor 
since) ; when a guard drew his Winchester on his blood 
cousin and made him behave; and when another put 
his own brother under arrest. So local hostility died 
down slowly, and the guard even became popular. 
Membership was eagerly sought and often denied, and 
the force numbered a hundred men. 

At last, it began to extend its operations and make 
expeditions out into the mountains to break up gangs 
of desperadoes. Once it fortified itself in the county 
court-house, cut port-holes through the walls, put the 

231 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

town under martial law, and guarded the jail night 
and day to prevent a Kentucky mountain-clan from 
rescuing a murderer who had been convicted and sen- 
tenced to death; and they stayed there a month till 
the law was executed, and the first man ever hung in 
the region met death on the gallows. 

After this, its work was about done, but incidents 
like the following continued for a year or two to be 
common : 

One night, I saw, or rather heard, one of the guard, 
who is now the youngest of the nine Board of Visitors 
of the University of Virginia, go over a cliff thirty 
feet high and down into Roaring Fork with the leader 
of the brick-yard gang locked in his arms. The water 
was rather shallow, and luckily the policeman fell on 
top. Three of the tough's ribs were broken, and we 
had to carry him to the calaboose, whence he escaped, 
with the aid of his sweetheart, who handed him in a 
saw and a file ; so that we had another chase after him, 
later, and again he ran into the river, and again, by * 
the aid of his sweetheart, he made his final escape. 

While the church-bells were ringing one morning, 
a drunken fellow came into town, picked up a stone 
from the street, and deliberately beat out a pane of 
glass in the door of the hardware-store so that he would 
not cut himself when he crawled in. Macfarlan ran 

22,2 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

up in answer to the ciy of a small boy, looked in, and, 
being without any weapon, got a poker from the club, 
next door. The tough had two butcher-knives out on 
the show-case, one revolver lying near them, and he 
was trying to load still another. He threw a butcher- 
knife at Macfarlan as the latter crawled in through the 
broken pane. Then, either he could not use his pistol 
at all, or he was dazed by the exhibition of such nerve, 
for Macfarlan, who was a lacrosse-player at Yale, and 
whose movements are lightning-like, downed him with 
the poker, and he and his brother, who was only a mo- 
ment behind through the hole in the door, carried him 
out, unconscious. 

A whistle blew one night, when a storm was going 
on. It came from a swamp that used to run through 
a part of the town. Before I could get fifty yards 
toward it, there were three flashes of lightning and two 
pistol-shots, followed by screams of ten-or and pain ; and 
in a few minutes I came upon a tough writhing at the 
foot of a tree, and Logan bending over him. By the 
first flash, the captain had seen the fellow behind a 
tree, and he called to him to come out ; by the second, 
he saw him levelling his pistol; and by the third flash, 
both fired. Logan thought at first that the man was 
mortally wounded, but he got well. One bitter cold 
night a negTO shot a white man and escaped. The en- 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

tire guard watched pass and gaj) and railroad track 
for him all the awful night long. The fifteen-year-old 
infant of the guard — since known at Harvard as " the 
Colonel " — was on guard at one point alone, with 
orders to hold every negro who came along. When re- 
lieved, the doughty little Colonel had about twenty 
shivering blacks huddled and held together at the point 
of his pistol. Among them was the negTO wanted, and 
that night the guard took him to the woods and spent 
another bitter night, guarding him from a mob. 

Twice again it saved a negro from certain death. 
Once the crime charged was that for which the law 
can fix no penalty, since there is none^ in Virginia 
it is death — death by law, as well. Some of the guard 
believed him guilty, and with some there was doubt; 
but, irrespective of belief, they answered Logan's call 
to guard the jail. The mob gathered, led by personal 
friends of the men who were on guard. As they ad- 
vanced, Logan drew his pistol; he would kill the first 
man who advanced beyond a certain point, he said, and 
they knew that he meant it. After a short parley, the 
mob agreed not to make any attempt to take the negro 
out that night — their plan being to wait until he was 
taken to the county jail next day — and they told 
Logan. 

" Will you give me your word that you won't? " he 
234 




The Infant of the (niard. 



Civilizing the Cumberland 

asked. They did, and lie put up his pistol, and left 
the jail without a guard — it needed none. Now the 
curious part of this story is that several of the men 
who were there and ready to shoot their own friends 
and give up their own lives to protect the negro, had 
already agreed — believing in his guilt — to help take 
him out of the county jail, if the leaders would wait 
until he was without the special jurisdiction of the 
guard, and where the hanging would not reflect on the 
reputation of the Gap. Indefensible sophistry if you 
will, but a tribute to the influence of the captain of the 
guard, to the passionate esprit du corps that prevailed, 
and to the inviolability of a particular oath. 

But all that is over — for the work is done. Out- 
siders gave the plan, the organization, the leadership, 
the example — the natives have done the rest. A sim- 
ilar awakening is all that is necessary in other moun- 
tain-communities of the South. 

And such was the guard. As I w^as not a member 
until its authority was established and the danger was 
considerably reduced, I can pay my tribute freely. 
Very quickly I was led to believe that nothing was 
more common than courage; nothing so exceptionable 
as cowardice; and with that guard, nothing was. I 
can recall no instance in which every man was not an 
eager volunteer when any risk was to be run; or was 

235 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

not eager to shirk when the duty was to keep him 
out of the trouble at hand, except once. One man 
was willing, one night, when an attack was to be made 
at daybreak on a cabin full of outlaws, to stay behind 
and hold the horses ; and this man was newly married, 
and was, besides, quite ill. The organization still ex- 
ists to-day, and the moral effect of its existence is so 
strong that on the last Fourth of July, w^hen there were 
several thousand people in town, not a single arrest was 
made. There was no need for an arrest. Four years 
ago the floor of the calaboose would have been many 
deep. And the weak old calaboose stands now, as it 
stood in the beginning, but, now, strong enough. 



236 



Man-Hunting in the Pound 



Man-Hunting in the Pound 

THE pale lad from the Pound was telling news 
to an eager circle of men just outside the open 
window of the little mountain-hotel, and, in- 
side, I dropped knife and fork to listen. The wily old 
'* Daddy " of the Fleming boys had been captured; 
the sons were being hemmed in that very day, and a 
fight between sheriff's posse and outlaws was likely 
any hour. 

Ten minutes later I was astride a gray mule, and 
with an absurd little .32 Smith & Wesson popgun on 
my hip — the only weapon I could find in town — was 
on my way to the Pound. 

Our volunteer police-guard down at " The Gap," 
twenty miles away, was very anxious to capture those 
Fleming boys. Talton Hall, feud-leader and des- 
perado, had already been hanged, and so had his bitter 
enemy, the Red Fox of the Mountains. With the 
Fleming outlaws brought to justice, the fight of the 
guard for law and order was about won. And so, as 

239 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

I was a member of that guard, it behooved me to 
hurry — which I did. 

The Gap is in the southwestern corner of old Vir- 
ginia, and is a ragged gash down through the Cumber- 
land Mountains to the water level of a swift stream 
that there runs through a mountain of limestone and 
between beds of iron ore and beds of coking coal. 
That is why some threescore young fellows gathered 
there from Blue-grass Kentucky and Tide-water Vir- 
ginia not many years ago, to dig their fortunes out of 
the earth. Nearly all were college graduates, and all 
were high-spirited, adventurous and well-born. They 
proposed to build a town and, incidentally, to make 
cheaper and better iron there than was made anywhere 
else on the discovered earth. 

A " boom " came. The labor and capital question 
was solved instantly, for every man in town was 
straightway a capitalist. You couldn't get a door 
hung — every carpenter was a meteoric Napoleon of 
finance. Every young blood in town rode Blue-grass 
saddle-horses and ate eight-o'clock dinners — making 
many dollars each day and having high jinks o' nights 
at the club, which, if you please, entertained, besides 
others of distinction, a duke and duchess who had 
wearily eluded the hospitality of New York. The 

240 



Man-Hunting in the Pound 

woods were full of aristocrats and plutocrats — Ameri- 
can and English. The world itself seemed to be mov- 
ing that way, and the Gap stretched its jaws wide with 
a grin of welcome. Later, you could get a door hung, 
but here I draw the veil. It was magnificent, but it 
was not business. 

At the high tide, even, the Gap was, however, some- 
thing of a hell-hole for several reasons; and the clash 
of contrasts was striking. The Kentucky feudsmen 
would chase each other there, now and then, from over 
Black Mountain; and the toughs on the Virginia side 
would meet there on Saturdays to settle little differ- 
ences of opinion and sentiment. They would quite 
take the town sometimes — riding through the streets, 
yelling and punctuating the sign of our one hotel with 
pistol-bullet periods to this refrain: 

G.r.a.n.dC.e.n.t.r.a.lH.o.t.e.l 

Hell! Hell! Hell! 

— keeping time, meanwhile, like darkies in a hoe- 
down. Or, a single horseman might gallop down one 
of our wooden sidewalks, with his reins between his 
teeth, and firing into the ground with a revolver in 
each hand. All that, too, was magnificent, but it was 
not business. The people who kept store would have 
to close up and take to the woods. 

241 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

And thus arose a unique organization — a volunteer 
police-guard of gentlemen, who carried pistol, billy, 
and whistle, and did a policeman's work — hewing 
always strictly to the line of the law. 

The result was rather extraordinary. The Gap 
soon became the only place south of Mason and 
Dixon's line, perhaps, where a street fight of five 
minutes' duration, or a lynching, was impossible. A 
yell, a pistol-shot, or the sight of a drunken man, be- 
came a rare occurrence. Local lawlessness thus sub- 
dued, the guard extended its benign influence — creat- 
ing in time a public sentiment fearless enough to 
convict a desperado, named Talt Hall; and, guarding 
him from rescue by his Kentucky clansmen for one 
month at the county-seat, thus made possible the first 
hanging that mountain-region had ever known. 

After that the natives, the easy-going, tolerant 
good people, caught the fever for law and order, for, 
like lawlessness, law, too, is contagious. It was they 
who guarded the Red Fox, Hall's enemy, to the 
scaffold, and it was they who had now taken up our 
hunt for the Red Fox's accomplices — the Fleming 
outlaws of the Pound. 

We were anxious to get those boys — they had 
evaded and mocked us so long. Usually they lived in 
a cave, but lately they had grown quite " tame." 

242 



Man-Hunting in the Pound 

From working in the fields, dressed in women's clothes, 
they got to staying openly at home and lounging 
around a cross-roads store at the Pound. They even 
had the impudence to vote for a sheriff and a county 
judge. They levied on their neighbors for food and 
clothes, and so bullied and terrorized the Pound that 
nobody dared to deny them whatever they asked, or 
dared to attempt an arrest. At last, they got three or 
four recruits, and tying red strijis of flannel to their 
shoulders and Winchesters, drilled in the county road, 
mocking our drill at the county-seat when we were 
guarding Talton Hall. 

This taunt was a little too much, and so we climbed 
on horseback late one afternoon, wrapped our guns in 
overcoats, and started out for an all-night ride, only to 
be turned back again at the foot of Black Mountain 
by our captain and first lieutenant, who had gone over 
ahead of us as spies. The outlaws were fighting 
among themselves; one man was killed, and we must 
wait until they got " tame " again. 

A few weeks later the guard rode over again, 
dashed into the Fleming cabin at daybreak and capt- 
ured a houseful of screaming women and children 
— to the great disgust of the guard and to the great 
humor of the mountaineers, who had heard of our 
coming and gone off, dancing, down the road only an 

243 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

hour before. It was then that the natives, emulating 
our example, took up the search. They were doing 
the work now, and it was my great luck to be the 
only member of the guard who knew what was 
going on. 

The day was hot, the road dusty, and the gray mule 
was slow. Within two hours I was at the head of the 
Pound — a wild, beautiful, lawless region that har- 
bored the desperadoes of Virginia and Kentucky, who 
could do mischief in either State and step to refuge 
across the line. Far ahead, I could see a green dip in 
the mountains where the K,ed Fox and the Fleming 
boys had shot the Mullins family of moonshiners to 
death from ambush one sunny morning in May. 

Below, sparkled Pound River roaring over a mill- 
day, and by the roadside, as I went down, I found the 
old miller alone. The posse of natives had run upon 
the Flemings that morning, he said, and the outlaws, 
after a sharp fight, had escaped — wounded. The 
sheriff was in charge of the searching party, and he 
believed that the Flemings would be caught now, for 
sure. 

" Which way? " I asked. 

The old fellow pointed down a twisting, sunlit 
ravine, dense with woods, and T rode down the dim 

244 



Man-Hunting in the Pound 

creek that twisted through it. Half an hour later I 
struck a double log-cabin with quilts hanging in its 
windows — which was unusual. An old woman ap- 
peared in the doorway — a tall, majestic old tigress, 
with head thrown back and a throat so big that it 
looked as though she had a goitre. 

"Who lives here r' 

" The Flemingses lives hyeh," she said, quietly. 

I was startled. I had struck the outlaws' cabin by 
chance, and so, to see what I might learn, I swung 
from the gray mule and asked for a glass of butter- 
milk. A handsome girl of twenty, a Fleming sister, 
with her dress open at the throat, stepped from the 
door and started to the spring-house. Through the 
door I could see another woman — wife of one of the 
outlaws — ill. A " base-born " child toddled toward 
me, and a ten-year-old boy — a Fleming brother — with 
keen eyes and a sullen face, lay down near me — 
watching me, like a snake in the grass. 

The old woman brought out a chair and lighted a 
pipe. 

" Whar air ye from, and what mought yo' name 
be?" 

I evaded half the inquiry. 

" I come from the Blue-grass, but I'm living at the 
Gap just now." She looked at me keenly, as did the 

245 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

snake in the grass, and I turned my chair so that I 
could watch that boy. 

" Was you over hyeh that night when them fellows 
from the Gap run in on us? " 

" :n^o." 

The old woman's big throat shook with quiet 
laughter. The girl laughed and the woman through 
the door laughed in her apron, but the boy's face 
moved not a muscle. It was plain that we had no 
monopoly of the humor of that daybreak dash into a 
house full of women and children. 

" One fool feller stuck his head up into the loft and 
lit a match to see if my boys was up thar. Lit a. 
match! He wouldn't 'a' had no head ef they had 
been." She laughed again, and drew on her pipe. 

" I give 'em coffee," she went on, " while they 
waited for my boys to come back, an' all I axed 'em 
was not to hurt 'em if they could help it." Then she 
broached the point at issue herself. 

" I s'pose you've heerd about the fight this 
mornin' ? " 

" Yes." 

*' I reckon you know my boys is hurt — mebbe 
they're dead in the woods somewhar now." She 
spoke with little sadness and with no animus what- 
ever. There was no use trying to conceal my purpose 

246 



Man-Hunting in the Pound 

down there — I saAV that at once — and I got up to 
leave. She would not let me pay for the butter- 
milk. 

" Ef you git hold of 'em — I wish you wouldn't 
harm 'em," she said, as I climbed on the gray mule, 
and I promised her that if they were caught un- 
harmed, no further harm should come to them; and I 
rode away, the group sitting motionless and watching 
me. 

For two hours I ambled along the top of a spur, on 
a pretty shaded road with precipitous woods on each 
side, and now and then an occasional cabin, but not a 
human being was in sight — not for long. Sometimes 
I would see a figure flitting around a corner of a cabin ; 
sometimes a door would open a few inches and close 
quickly ; and I knew the whole region was terrorized. 
For two hours I rode on through the sunlight and 
beauty of those lonely hills, and then I came on a 
crowd of mountaineers all armed with Winchesters, 
and just emerging from a cabin by the roadside. It 
was one division of the searching party, and I joined 
them. They were much amused when they saw the 
Christmas toy with which I was armed. 

" S'pose one o' the Flemings had stepped out'n the 
bushes an' axed ye what ye was doin' down hyeh — 
what would ye 'a' said? " 

247 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

That might have been embarrassing, and I had to 
laugh. I really had not thought of that. 

One man showed me the Winchester they had capt- 
ured — Heenan's gun. Tied to the meat-house and 
leaping against a rope-tether was a dog — which, too, 
they had captured — Heenan's dog. As we started out 
the yard " Gooseneck " John Branham, with a look 
of disgust at my pistol, whipped out one of his own — 
some two feet long — for me to swing on my other hip. 
Another fellow critically took in my broad-brim straw 
hat. 

"Hell! "he said. " That won't do. They can see 
that a mile through the woods. I'll get ye a hat." 
And he went back into the cabin and brought out a 
faded slouch-hat. 

" That's Heenan's! " he said. That, too, they had 
captured. 

And so I wore Heenan's hat — looking for Heenan. 

Half a mile down the road we stepped aside 
twenty yards into the bushes. There was the cave in 
which the outlaws had lived. There were in it several 
blankets, a little bag of meal, and some bits of ham. 
Right by the side of the road was a huge pile of shav- 
ings, where the two outlaws had whittled away many 
a sunny hour. Half an hour on, down a deep ravine 

248 



Man-Hunting in the Pound 

and up a long slope, and we were on a woody knoll 
where the fight had taken place that morning. The 
little trees looked as though a Gatling gun had been 
turned loose on them. 

The posse had found out where the Flemings were, 
the night before, by capturing the old Fleming mother 
while she was carrying them a bag of provisions. As 
they lay in the brush, she had come along, tossing 
stones into the bushes to attract the attention of her 
sons. One of the men had clicked the slide of liis 
Winchester, and the poor old woman, thinking that 
was the signal from one of her boys, walked toward 
them, and they caught her and kept her prisoner all 
night in the woods. Under her apron, they found the 
little fellow who had lain like a snake in the grass 
beside me back at the cabin, and, during the night, he 
had slipped away and escaped and gone back to the 
county-seat, twenty miles away, on foot, to tell his 
father, who was a prisoner there, what was taking 
place at home. 

At daybreak, when the posse was closing in on the 
Flemings, the old woman sprang suddenly to her feet 
and shouted shrilly: "Run down the holler, boys; 
run down the holler! " 

The ways of rude men, naturally, are not gentle, 
and the sheriff sprang out and caught the old woman 

249 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

by the throat and choked her cries; and they led her 
to the rear — weeping and wringing her hands. 

A few minutes later, as the men slipped forward 
through the woods and mist, they came upon the 
Flemings crouched in the bushes, and each creeping 
for a tree. " Gooseneck " John Branham — so called 
because of the length of his neck — Doc Swindall and 
Ed Hall opened fire. For twenty minutes those two 
Fleming boys fought twenty-two men fiercely. 

" Just looked like one steady flame was a-comin' out 
o' each man's Winchester all the time," said Branham, 
pointing to two bullet-pecked trees behind which the 
outlaws had stood. " I was behind this birch," laying 
his hand on a tree as big as his thigh, and pointing out 
where the Flemings had drilled three bullet-holes in it 
between his neck and his waistband. 

" I seed Jim Hale pokin' his gun around this hyeh 
tree and pumpin' it off inter the gi'ound," said Hall, 
" an' I couldn't shoot for laughin'." 

" Well," said Swindall, " I was tryin' to git in a 
shot from the oak there, and something struck me and 
knocked me out in the bushes. I looked around, and 
damn me if there wasn't seven full-grown men behind 
my tree." 

It had evidently been quite warm for a while, until 
Branham caught Heenan in the shoulder with a load 

250 



Man-Hunting in the Pound 

of buckshot. Heenan's hat went off, his gun dropped 
to his feet; he cried simply: 

" Oh ycjn! " Then he ran, 

Cal Fleming, too, ran then, and the posse fired after 
them. The dog, curiously enough, lay where he had 
lain during the fight, at the base of Heenan's tree — 
and so hat, dog, and gun were captured. I had won- 
dered why the posse had not pursued the Flemings 
after wounding them, and I began to understand. 
They were so elated at having been in a fight and come 
out safe, that they stopped to cook breakfast, gather 
mementoes, and talk it all over. 

Ten minutes later we were at the cabin, where the 
fugitives had stopped to get some coffee. 

" They was pretty badly hurt, I reckon," said the 
woman who had given them something to eat. 
" Heenan's shoulder was all shot up, an' I reckon I 
could git my hand into a hole in Cal's back. Cal was 
groanin' a good deal, an' had to lay do\vii every ten 
yards." 

We went on hurriedly, and in an hour w^e struck the 
main body of the searching party, and .as soon as the 
sheriff saw me, he came running forward, i^ow, the 
guard at the Gap had such a reputation that any mem- 
ber of it was supposed to be past-master in the conduct 
of such matters as were now pending. He inmiedi- 

^51 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

ately called me " Captain," and asked me to take 
charge of the party. I looked round at them, and I 
politely veered from the honor. Such a tough-looking 
gang it has rarely been my good luck to see, and I 
had little doubt that many of them were worse than 
the Fleming boys. One tall fellow particularly at- 
tracted my attention; he was fully six and one-half 
feet high; he was very slender, and his legs and arms 
were the longest I have ever seen swung to a human 
frame. He had sandy hair, red eyes, high cheek- 
bones, and on each cheek was a diminutive boil. 
About his waist was strapped a huge revolver, and to 
the butt of this pistol was tied a big black bow-ribbon 
—tied there, no doubt, by his sweetheart,, as a badge 
of death or destruction to his enemies. He looked me 
over calmly. 

" Hev you ever searched for a dead man? " he asked 

deeply. 

It was humiliating to have to confess it in that 

crowd, but I had not— not then. 

" Well, I hev," he said, significantly. 

I had little doubt, and for one, perhaps, of his own 

killing. 

In the hollow just below us was the cabin of Par- 
son Swindall— a friend of the Flemings. The parson 
thought the outlaws dying or dead, and he knew the 

252 



•■ a 







/.' 



" Hev you ever searched for a dead man 



Man-Hunting in the Pound 

cave to which they must have dragged themselves to 
die. If I got permission from the old Fleming 
mother, he would guide me, he said, to the spot. I 
sent back a messenger, promising that the bodies of her 
sons should not be touched, if they were dead, nor 
should they be further harmed if they were still alive. 
The fierce old woman's answer came back in an hour. 
" She'd ruther they rotted out in the woods." 

E'ext morning I stretched the men out in a long 
line, thirty feet apart, and we started on the search. I 
had taken one man and spent the night in the parson's 
cabin hoping that, if only wounded, the Flemings 
might slip in for something to eat; but I had a sleep- 
less, useless night. Indeed, the search had only a 
mild interest and no excitement. We climbed 
densely thicketed hills, searched ravines, rocks, caves, 
swam the river backward and forward, tracking sus- 
picious footsteps in the mud and through the woods. 
I had often read of pioneer woodcraft, and I learned, 
during these three days, that the marvellous skill of it 
still survives in the Southern mountains. 

It was dangerous work; dangerous for the man who 
should run upon the outlaws, since these would be 
lying still to hear anyone approach them, and would 
thus " have the drop " from ambush. Once, to be 

253 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

sure, we came near a tragedy. At one parting of two 
roads several of us stopped to decide which road we 
should take. At that moment the Fleming boys were 
lying in the bushes twenty yards away, with their 
Winchesters cocked and levelled at us over a log, and 
only waiting for us to turn up that path to open fire. 
As I was told afterward, Heenan, very naturally, had 
his Winchester pointed on his hat, which, at that 
moment, was on my head. By a lucky chance I 
decided to take the other path. Otherwise, I should 
hardly be writing these lines to-day. 

For three days we searched, only to learn, or rather 
to be told, which was not the truth, that, in women's 
dress, the Flemings had escaped over into Kentucky. 
As a matter of fact, they lay two weeks in a cave, Cal 
flat on his back and letting the water from the roof of 
the cave drip, hour by hour, on a frightful wound in 
his breast. 

For several months they went uncaptured, until 
finally three of the men who were with me, " Goose- 
neck " John Branham, Ed Hall, and Doc Swindall, 
located them over the border in West Virginia. Of 
course a big reward was offered for each, or they were 
" rewarded," as the mountaineers say. The three 
men closed in on them in a little store one morning. 

254 



Man-Hunting in the Pound 

Cal Fleming was reading a letter when the three 
surged in at the door, and Hall, catching Cal by the 
lapel of his coat, said quietly: 

"' You are my prisoner." 

Cal sprang hack to break the hold, and Hall shot 
him through the breast, killing him outright. 
Heenan, who was not thought to be dangerous, sprang 
at the same instant ten feet away, and his first shot 
caught Hall in the back of the head, dropping the 
officer to his knees. Thinking he had done for Hall, 
Heenan turned on Branham and Swindall, and shot 
Branham through both lungs and Swindall through 
the neck — dropping both to the floor. This left the 
duel between Hall on his knees and Heenan. At last 
a lucky shot from Hall's pistol struck Heenan's pistol 
hand, lacerating the fingers and making him drop his 
weapon, Heenan ran into the back room then, and, 
finding no egress, reappeared in the doorway, with his 
bloody hands above his head. 

" Well, Ed," he said, simply, " I can't do no more." 

Six months later Heenan Fleming was brought 
back to the county-seat to be tried for his life, and I 
felt sure that he would meet his end on the scaffold 
where Talton Hall and Red Fox had suffered death. 

As he sat there in the prisoner's box, his face pale 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

and flecked with powder, I could see a sunken spot in 
his jaw, through which one of Hall's bullets had gone, 
and his bright, black eyes gleamed fire. I stepped up 
to him. I thought there was no chance of his escap- 
ing the gallows; but, if he did escape, I wanted to be 
as friendly with him as possible. 

"Heenan," I said, "did you ever get your hat 
back? " 

" iSTo," he said. 

" Well, if you come clear, go up to the store and get 
the best hat in the house, and have it charged to me." 
Heenan smiled. 

Now, by a curious chance, the woman on whose tes- 
timony the Red Fox had been hanged, had died mean- 
while. Some people said she had been purposely put 
out of the way to avoid further testimony. At any 
rate, through her death, Heenan did come clear, and 
the last time I saw him, he was riding out of the town 
on a mule, with his baby in front of him and on his 
head a brand-new derby hat — mine. 



256 



The Red Fox of the Mountains 



The Red Fox of the Mountains 

THE Red Fox of the Moimtains was going to be 
hanged. Being a preacher, as well as herb- 
doctor, revenue-officer, detective, crank, and 
assassin, he was going to preach his own funeral ser- 
mon on the Sunday before the day set for his passing. 
He was going to wear a suit of white and a death-cap 
of white, both made of damask tablecloth by his little 
old wife, and both emblems of the purple and fine linen 
that he w^as to put on above. Moreover, he would 
have his body kept unburied for three days — saying 
that, on the third day, he would arise and go about 
preaching. How he reconciled such a dual life at one 
and the same time, over and under the stars, was 
known only to his twisted brain, and is no concern of 
mine — I state the facts. But had such a life been 
possible, it would have been quite consistent with the 
Red Fox's strange dual way on earth. For, on Sun- 
days he preached the Word ; other days, he was a walk- 
ing arsenal, with a huge 50 x 75 Winchester over one 

259 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

shoulder, two belts of gleaming cartridges about his 
waist, and a great pistol swung to either hip. In the 
woods, he would wear moccasins with the heels for- 
ward, so that no man could tell which way he had 
gone. You might be walking along a lonely path in 
the mountains and the Red Fox — or " old Doc " — as 
he was usually called, would step mysteriously from 
the bushes at your side, ask a few questions and, a few 
hundred yards farther, would disappear again — to be 
heard of again — a few hours later — at some incredible 
distance away. Credited thus with superhuman pow- 
ers of locomotion and wearing those mysterious moc- 
casins — and, as a tribute to his infernal shrewdness — 
he came to be known, by and by, as " The Red Fox 
of the Mountains." Sometimes he would even carry 
a huge spy-glass, five feet long, with which he watched 
his enemies from the mountain-tops. When he had 
" located " them, he would slip down and take a pot 
shot at them. And yet, day or night, he would, as 
*' yarb-doctor," w^alk a dozen miles to see a sick friend, 
and charge not a cent for his services. And day and 
night he would dream dreams and have visions and 
talk his faith by the hour. One other dark deed had 
been laid to his door — unproven — but now, caught in 
his own toils, at last, the Red Fox was going to be 
hanged. 

260 



The Red Fox of the Mountains 

The scene of that death-sentence was a strange one. 
The town was a little mountain-village — a county-seat 
— down in the southwestern corner of Virginia, and 
not far from the Kentucky line. The court-house was 
of brick, but rudely built. 

The court-room was crowded and still, and the 
Judge shifted uneasily in his chair — for it was his first 
death-sentence — and leaned forward on his elbows — 
speaking slowly: 

^' Have you anything to say whereby sentence of 
death should not be pronounced on you? " 

The Red Fox rose calmly, shifted his white tie, 
cleared his throat, and stood a moment, steady and 
silent, with his strange dual character showing in his 
face — kindness and benevolence on one side, a wolfish 
snarl on the other, and both plain to any eye that 
looked. 

'' No," he said, clearly, " but I have one friend here 
who I would like to speak for me." 

Again the Judge shifted in his chair. He looked 
at the little old woman who sat near, in black — wdfe 
to the Red Fox and mother of his children. 

" Why," he said, '' why — yes — but who is your 
friend?" 

" Jesus Christ! " said the Red Fox, sharply. The 
whole house shivered, and the Judge reverently bowed 
his head. 

261 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Only a few months before, I had seen the Red Fox 
in that same court-room. But, then, he had a huge pis- 
tol in each hand and bore himself like a conqueror, as 
he guarded his old enemy, Talton Hall, to and fro 
from court-house to jail, and stood over him in the 
court-room while that old enemy was on trial for his 
life. To be sure, that Hying wedge of civilization — 
the volunteer police-gaiard down at the " Gap," twenty 
miles away, was on hand, too, barricading the court- 
house, through the brick walls of which they had cut 
port-holes, keeping the town under military law, and 
on guard, night and day, to prevent Hall's Kentucky 
clansmen from rescuing him; but it was the Red 
Fox who furnished money and brains to run his enemy 
down — who guarded him to jail and who stood at the 
railway station, with his big pistols and his strange 
smile, keeping at bay the mob who hungered for Hall's 
life without the trial by his peers. And now, where 
Hall had stood then, — the Red Fox was standing now, 
with the cross-beam of the gallows from which Hall 
had dangled, and from which the Fox was to dangle 
now, — plain to his eyes through the open window. It 
was a curious transformation in so short a time from 
the hunter-of-men to the hunted-of-men, and it was 
still more curious that, just while the Red Fox was 
hounding Hall to his grave, he should have done the 

262 







w^^ 



^'4 



G 



A>>- 



The Red Fox of the Mountains 

deed that, straightway and soon, was to lead him 
there. 

For the Red Fox had one otlier bitter enemy whom 
he feared even more than he hated — an old moon- 
shiner from the Pound — who came to the little 
county-seat every court-day. Indeed, a certain two- 
horse wagon, driven by a thin, little, old woman and 
a big-eared, sallow-faced boy, used to be a queer sight 
on the dirty streets of the town ; for the reason that the 
woman and boy rarely left the wagon, and both were 
always keenly watchful and rather fearful of some- 
thing that lay on straw behind the seat. This some- 
thing, you soon discovered, was the out-stretched body 
of a huge, gaunt, raw-boned mountaineer, so badly 
paralyzed that he could use nothing but his head and 
his deep-sunken, keen, dark eyes. The old man had 
a powerful face, and his eyes were fierce and wilful. 
He was well known to the revenue service of North 
Carolina, and in a fight with the ofiicers of that State, 
a few years previous, he had got the wounds that had 
put him on his back, unable to move hand or foot. 

He was carried thence to the Pound in Kentucky, 
where he lived and ran his " wild-cat " stills, unde- 
terred by the law or the devil. Ira Mullins — old Ira 
Mullins — was his name, and once when the Red Fox 
was in the revenue service, the two came into con- 

263 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

flict. Ira was bringing some " moonshine " back from 
Korth Carolina in a wagon, and the Red Fox waited 
for him at the county-seat W'ith a posse, and opened 
fire on Mullins and two companions from behind fence 
and house corner. (There are some who say that the 
Fox fired from a very safe position indeed.) Only one 
was killed ; the horses ran away and carried off the body 
and left the other two on foot. A little later, old Ira 
walked leisurely up the street and on out of town, un- 
molested and unfollowed. This was supposed to be 
the origin of the trouble between Mullins, moon- 
shiners, and the Red Fox of the Mountains. 

One day, while Talton Hall was on trial and the 
Red Fox was guarding him, old Ira came to town. 
Two days later the Red Fox disappeared over night, 
and the next morning, just while old Ira, his wife, his 
big-eared son of fourteen years, a farm-hand, old Ira's 
brother, and that brother's wife were turning a corner 
of the road through Pound Gap, and, just under some 
great rocks on a little spur above them, sheets of fire 
blazed in the sunlight and the roar of Winchesters rose. 
Only two got away : the boy, whose suspenders were cut 
in two, as he ran up the road, and the brother's wife, 
who was allowed to escape back into Virginia and who 
gave the alarm. Behind the rocks were found some 
bits of a green veil, a heap of cartridge shells, and an 

264 



The Red Fox of the Mountains 

old army haversack. There were large twigs which 
had been thrust into crevices between the rocks about 
waist high. These were withered, showing that some 
of the assassins had been waiting for the victims for 
days. Who had done the murder was a mystery. The 
old woman, who had escaped, said there were three 
men, and so there turned out to be; that they had the 
upper part of their faces covered with green veils; and 
that she thought two of the men were Cal and Heenan 
Fleming of the Pound and that the third was the Red 
Fox of the Mountains. Some of the empty shells that 
.were found behind the " blind " fitted a 50 x 75 Win- 
chester, and only three of such guns were known in the 
mountains. It was learned later that the Red Fox had 
one of these three. The shells found were rim-fire, 
instead of centre-fire, as the Fox on his trial tried to 
prove that his shells were. An examination of the 
gun proved that some friend had tried to alter it; but 
the job was so bungling that it was plain that tinker- 
ing had been done. So that the Winchester and the 
effort of this unskilful friend and the old man's ab- 
sence from his post of duty on the night preceding the 
murder, made it plain that the Red Fox had had a 
hand in the murder; so that when Hall — who, after 
his sentence, had been taken away for safe-keeping, 
was brought back to the county-seat for execution — 

265 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

there was the Red Fox in the adjoining cell of the same 
cage whose door was to close on Hall. And as Hall 
passed, the Red Fox thrust out a freckled paw to 
shake hands, but Hall struck at him with his manacles 
and cursed him bitterly. And in those cells the two 
enemies waited — the one for the scaffold that both 
could hear building outside, and the other for the trial 
that w^as to put his feet on the same trap-door. The 
Red Fox swung in a hammock, reading his Bible by 
day and having visions at night, which he would inter- 
pret to me, when I was on Hall's death-watch, as signs 
of his own innocence and his final freedom among the 
hills. Nothing delighted Hall more, meanwhile, at 
that time, than to torture his old enemy. 

" I know I'm purty bad," he would say — " but 
thar's lots wuss men than me in the world — old Doc 
in thar, for instance." For " old Doc " by virtue of 
his herb practice was his name as well as the Red Fox 
of the Mountains. And the old Fox would go on read- 
ing his Bible. 

Then Hall would say: 

" Oh, thar ain't nothin' twixt ole Doc and me — 
'cept this iron wall," and he would kick the thin wall 
so savagely that the Red Fox would pray unavailingly 
to be removed to another part of the jail. 

And when the day of Hall's execution came, he got 
266 



The Red Fox of the Mountains 

humble and kissed the first lieutenant's hand — and he 
forgave the Red Fox and asked to kiss him. And the 
Red Fox gave him the Judas-kiss through the grating 
of his cell-door and, when Hall marched out, took out 
his watch and stood by the cell-door listening eagerly. 
Presently the fall of the trap-door echoed through the 
jail — " Th-o-o-m-p ! " The Red Fox glued his eyes 
to the watch in his hand. The second hand went twice 
around its circuit and he snapped the lid and gave a 
deep sigh of relief: 

" Well, he's gone now," said the Red Fox, and he 
went back in peace to his hammock and his Bible. 

The Red Fox was no seer in truth, and his inter- 
pretations of his own visions proved him no prophet. 

And so, finally, where Hall had stood, the Red 
Fox of the Mountains was standing now, and where, in 
answer to the last question of the Judge, Hall had sat 
in sullen silence, the Red Fox rose to ask that a friend 
might speak for him — startling the court-room: 

" Jesus Christ." 

Thereupon, of course, the Red Fox lifted a Bible 
from the desk before him and for one half hour read 
verses that bore on his own innocence and burned with 
fire and damnation for his enemies. The plea was 
useless. Useless was the silent, eloquent, piteous plea 

267 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

of the little old woman in black who sat near him. 
The Red Fox was doomed. 

The guard down at " the Gap " had done its duty 
with Talton Hall, but it was the policy of the guard 
to let the natives uphold the law whenever they would 
and could; and so the guard went home to the Gap 
while the natives policed the jail and kept old Doc 
safe. To be sure, little care was necessary, for the 
Red Fox did not have the friends who would have 
flocked to the rescue of Talton Hall. 

That funeral sermon was preached on the Sunday 
before the day, and a curious crowd gathered to hear 
him. The Red Fox was led from the jail; he stood 
on the porcli of the jailer's house with a little table in 
front of him; on it lay a Bible; on the other side of 
the table sat a Httle, pale-faced, old woman in black, 
with a black sunbonnet drawn close to her face. By 
the side of the Bible lay a few pieces of bread. It 
was the Red Fox's last communion on earth — a com- 
munion which he administered to himself and in which 
there was no other soul on earth to join, except the 
little old woman in black. 

It was pathetic beyond words, when the old fellow 
lifted the bread and asked the crowd to come forward 
to partake with him in the last sacrament. Not a 
soul moved. Only the little old woman who had 
been ill-treated, deserted by the old fellow for many 

268 



The Red Fox of the Mountains 

years ; only she of all the crowd gave any answer, and 
she turned her face for one instant thnidly toward 
him. With a churlish gesture the old man pushed the 
bread over toward her, and with hesitating, trem- 
bling fingers she reached for it. 

The sermon that followed was rambling, denuncia- 
tory, and unforgiving. Never did he admit guilt. 

On the last day, the Red Fox appeared in his white 
suit of tablecloth. The little old woman in black 
had even made the cap which was to be drawn over 
his face at the last moment — and she had made that, 
too, of white. He walked firmly to the scaffold-steps 
and stood there for one moment blinking in the sun- 
light, his head just visible over the rude box, some 
twenty feet square, that surrounded him — a rude con- 
trivance to shield the scene of his death. For one 
moment he looked at the sky and the trees with a 
face that was white and absolutely expressionless; 
then he sang one hymn of two verses. The white cap 
was drawn, and the strange old man was launched on 
the way to that world in which he believed so finnly, 
and toward which he had trod so strange a way on 
earth. 

The little old woman in black, as he wished, had 
the body kept for three days, unburied. His ghost, 
the mountaineer:; say, walks lonely paths of the Cum- 
berland to this day, but — the Red Fox never rose. 

269 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 



THROUGH mountain and valley, humanity had 
talked of nothing else for weeks, and before 
dawn of the fatal day, humanity started in con- 
verging lines from all other counties for the county- 
seat of Wise — from Scott and from Lee; from w^ild 
Dickinson and Buchanan, w^here one may find white 
men who have never looked upon a black man's face ; 
from the " Pound," which harbors the desperadoes 
of two sister States whose skirts are there stitched 
together with pine and pin-oak along the crest of the 
Cumberland; and, farther on, even from the far away 
Kentucky hills, mountain-humanity had started at 
dawn of the day before. A stranger would have 
thought that a county-fair, a camp-meeting, or a circus 
was the goal. Men and women, boys and girls, chil- 
dren and babes in arms ; each in his Sunday best — the 
men in jeans, slouch hats, and high boots; the women 
in gay ribbons and brilliant homespun ; in wagons and 

2/3 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

on foot, on horses and mules, carrying man and man, 
man and boy, lover and sweetheart, or husband and 
wife and child — all moved through the crisp Septem- 
ber air, past woods of russet and crimson and along 
brown dirt roads to a little straggling mountain-town 
where midway of the one long street and shut in by 
a tall board-fence was a court-house, with the front 
door closed and barred, and port-holes cut through its 
brick walls and looking to the rear; and in the rear 
a jail; and to one side of the jail, a tall wooden box 
with a projecting cross-beam in plain sight, from the 
centre of which a rope swung to and fro, when the 
wind moved. 

Never had a criminal met death at the hands of the 
law in that region, and it was not sure that the law 
was going to take its course now; for the condemned 
man was a Kentucky feudsman, and his clan was there 
to rescue him from the gallows, and some of his ene- 
mies were on hand to see that he died a just death by 
a bullet, if he should manage to escape the noose. And 
the guard, whose grim dream of law and order seemed 
to be coming true, was there from the Gap, twenty 
miles away, to see that the noose did its ordained work. 
On the outskirts of the town, and along every road, 
boyish policemen were halting and disarming every 
man who carried a weapon in sight. At the back win- 

274 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 

dows of tlio court-house and at tlie threatening little 
port-holes were more youngsters, manning Winchesters 
and needle-guns; at the windows of the jailer's house, 
which was of frame and which joined and fronted the 
jail, were more still on guard, and around the jail was 
a line of them, heavily armed to keep the crowd back 
on the outer side of the jail-yard fence. 

The crowd had been waiting for hours. The neigh- 
boring hills were black with people, waiting; the 
house-tops were black with men and boys, waiting; 
the trees in the streets were bending under the weight 
of human bodies, and the jail-yard fence was full three 
■deep with people hanging to the fence and hanging to 
one another's necks, waiting. Now the fatal noon was 
hardly an hour away, and a big man with a red face 
appeared at one of the jailer's windows; and then the 
sheriff, who began to take out the sash. At once a 
hush came over the crowd and then a rustling and a 
murmur. It was the prisoner's lawyer, and something 
was going to happen. Faces and gun-muzzles thick- 
ened at the port-holes and the court-house windows; 
the line of guards in the jail-yard wheeled and stood 
with their faces upturned to the window; the crowd on 
the fence scuffled for better positions, and the people in 
the locust-trees craned their necks from the branches, 
or climbed higher, and there was a great scraping on 

275 



Blue-erass and Rhododendron 

all the roofs; even the black crowd out on the hills 
seemed to catch the excitement and to sway, while 
spots of intense blue and vivid crimson came out here 
and there from the blackness when the women rose 
from their seats on the ground. Then — sharply — 
there was silence. The big man disappeared, and in 
his place and shut in by the sashless window, as 
by a picture-frame, and blinking in the strong light, 
stood a man with black hair, cropped close, beard gone, 
face pale and worn, and hands that looked thin — stood 
Talton Hall. 

He was going to confess — that was the rumor. His 
lawyers wanted him to confess; the preacher who had 
been singing hymns with him all morning wanted him 
to confess; the man himself wanted to confess; and 
now he was going to confess. What deadly mysteries 
he might clear up if he w^ould ! JSTo wonder the crowd 
was still eager, for there was hardly a soul but knew 
his record — and what a record! His best friends put 
the list of his victims no lower than thirteen — his ene- 
mies no lower than thirty. And there, looking up at 
him, were three women whom he had widowed or 
orphaned, and at one comer of the jail-yard still an- 
other, a little woman in black — the widow of the con- 
stable whom Hall had shot to death only a year before. 

Now Hall's lips opened and closed ; and opened and 
276 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 

closed again. Then he took hold of the side of the 
window and looked behind him. The sheriff brought 
him a chair and he sat down. Apparently he was weak 
and he was going to wait awhile; and so he sat, in 
full view, still blinking in the strong light, but nodding 
with a faint smile to some friend whom he could make 
out on the fence, or in a tree, or on a house-top, and 
waiting for strength to lay bare his wretched soul to 
man as he claimed to have laid it bare to God. 



II 

One year before, at Norton, six miles away, when 
the constable turned on his heel. Hall, without warn- 
ing, and with the malice of Satan, shot him, and he 
fell on the railroad track — dead. Norton is on the 
Virginia side of Black Mountain, and at once Hall 
struck oif into the woods and climbed the rocky breast 
of the Cumberland, to make for his native Kentucky 
hills. 

" Somehow," he said to me, when he was in jail a 
year after, " I knowed right then that my name was 
Dennis " — a phrase of evil prophecy that he had 
picked up outside the mountains. He swore to me 
that, the night of the murder, when he lay down to 
sleep, high on the mountain-side and under some 

277 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

rhododendron-bushes, a flock of little birds flew in on 
him like a gust of rain and perched over and around 
him, twittering at him all night long. At daybreak 
they were gone, but now and then throughout the day, 
as he sat in the sun planning his escape, the birds would 
sweep chattering over his head, he said, and would 
sweep chattering back again. He swore to me further, 
on the day he was to go to the scaffold (I happened to 
be on the death-watch that morning), that at daybreak 
those birds had come again to his prison-window and 
had chirped at him through the bars. All this struck 
me as strange, for Hall's brain was, on all other points, 
as clear as rain, and, unlike " The Red Fox of the 
Mountains," who occupied the other cell of his cage, 
was not mystical, and never claimed to have visions. 
Hall was a Kentucky f eudsman — one of the mountain- 
border ruffians who do their deeds of deviltry on one 
side of the State-line that runs the crest of Black 
Mountain, and then step over to the other side to 
escape the lax arm of mountain-justice. He was little 
sorry for what he had done, except, doubtless, for the 
reason that the deed would hamper his freedom. He 
must move elsewhere, when a pair of hot black eyes 
were at that moment luring him back to Norton. 
Still, he could have the woman follow him, and his 
temporary denial bothered him but little. In reality, 

278 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 

he had not been much afraid of arrest and trial, in spite 
of the birds and his premonition. He had come clear 
of the charge of murder many times before, but he 
claimed afteinvard that he was more uneasy than he 
had ever been; and with what good reason he little 
knew. Only a few miles below where he sat, and be- 
yond the yawning mouth that spat the little branch 
trickling past his feet as a torrent through the Gap 
and into Powell's Valley, was come a new power to 
take his fate in hand. Down there — the Gap itself was 
a hell-hole then — a little band of '' furriners " had 
come in from blue-grass Kentucky and tide-water Vir- 
ginia to make their homes; young fellows in whom 
pioneering was a birthright; who had taken matters 
into their own bauds, had formed a volunteer police- 
guard, and were ready, if need be, to match Win- 
chester with Winchester, pistol with pistol, but always 
for and in the name of the law. Talt had one 
enemy, too, to whom he gave little thought. This 
was old '' Doc " Taylor — a queer old fellow, who 
was preacher, mountain-doctor, revenue-officer; who 
preached Swedenborgianism — Heaven knows where he 
got it in those wilds — doctored with herbs night and 
day for charity, and chased criminals from vanity, or 
personal enmity, or for fun. He knew every by-path 
through the mountains, and he moved so swiftly that 

^79 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

the superstitious credited him with superhuman powers 
of locomotion. Nobody was surprised, walking some 
lonely path, to have old Doc step from the bushes 
at his side and as mysteriously slip away. He had a 
spy-glass fully five feet long with which to watch his 
quarry from the mountain-tops, and he wore mocca- 
sins with the heels forward so that nobody could tell 
which way he had gone. In time his cunning gave 
him the title of " The Eed Fox of the Mountains." 
It was the Red Fox who hated Hall and was to catch 
him; the " furriners from the Gap " were to guard 
him, see that he was tried by a fearless jury, and, if 
pronounced guilty, hanged. Hall knew Taylor's 
hatred, of course, but scorned him, and he had heard 
vaguely of the Gap. In prison, he alternately cursed 
his cell-mate, who, by a curious turn of fate, was none 
other than the Red Fox caught, at last, in his own 
toils, and wondered deeply, and with hearty oaths, 
" what in the hell " people at the Gap had against him 
that they should leave their business and risk their 
lives to see that he did not escape a death that was 
unmerited. The mountaineer finds abstract devotion 
to law and order a hard thing to understand. The 
Red Fox more than hated Hall — he feared him; and 
how Hall, after capture, hated him! No sooner was 
the feudsman's face turned southward than the Red 

280 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 

Fox kept cunning gnard over the black-eyed woman 
at ISTorton and, tlirongli her, learned where his enemy 
was. More — he furnished money for two detectives 
to go after Hall and arrest him on a charge of which 
he was not guilty, and thus decoy him, without re- 
sistance, to jail, where they told him the real reason 
of the arrest. Hall fell to the floor in a cursing fit 
of rage. Then the Red Fox himself went south to 
help guard Hall back to the mountains. A mob of the 
dead constable's friends were waiting for him at ISTor- 
ton — for the murder was vicious and unprovoked — 
and old Doc stood by Hall's side, facing the infuriated 
crowd with a huge drawn pistol in each hand and a 
peculiar smile on his washed-out face. Old Squire 
Salyers, father-in-law to the constable, made a vicious 
cut at the prisoner with a clasp knife as he stepped 
from the train, but he was caught and held, and with 
the help of the volunteer guard from the Gap, Hall 
was got safely to jail at Glade ville, the county-seat of 
Wise. 

It w^as to protect Hall from his enemies that con- 
cerned Hall's Kentucky mountain-clan at first, for 
while trial for murder was not rare and conviction was 
quite possible, such a thing as a hanging had never 
been heard of in that part of the world. Why, then, 
the Red Fox was so eager to protect Hall for the law 

281 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

was a mysterj to many, but the truth probably was 
that he had mischief of his own to conceal; and, more- 
over, he knew about tluit guard at the Gap. So, during 
the trial, the old man headed the local guard that led 
Hall to and from jail to court-house, and stood by 
him in the court-room with one of the big pistols ever 
drawn and that uncanny smile on his uncanny face. 
For the Red Fox had a strange face. One side was 
calm, kindly, benevolent; on the other side a curious 
twitch of the muscles would now and then lift the cor- 
ner of his mouth into a wolfish snarl. So that Dr. 
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in old Doc were separated only 
by the high bridge of his nose. Throughout the long 
trial, old Doc was at his post. Only one night was 
he gone, and the next morning an old moonshiner and 
four of his family were shot from ambush in the 
" Pound." As Doc was back at his post that after- 
noon, nobody thought of connecting the murder with 
him. Besides, everybody was concerned with the 
safety of Hall — his enemies and his friends: his 
friends for one reason, that eight of the jury were 
fearless citizens of the " Gap " who would give a ver- 
dict in accordance with the law and the evidence, in 
spite of the intimidation that, hitherto, had never 
failed to bring a desperado clear; and for another, 
that the coils were surely tightening; his enemies, for 

282 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 

fear that Hall's friends would cheat the gallows by 
rescuing him from jail. Rumors of rescue thickened 
every day — Hall's Kentucky clan was coming over 
Black Mountain to take the prisoner from jail. More- 
over, Hall's best friend — John liawn — was the most 
influential man in the county — a shrewd, daring fellow 
who kept a band of armed retainers within call of his 
yard-fence. He, too, it was said, was going to help 
Hall to freedom. Accordingly the day before the ver- 
dict was brought in, twenty of the volunteer guard 
came up from the Gap, twenty miles away, to keep 
Hall's friends from saving him from the gallows, and 
his enemies from rescuing him for death by a Win- 
chester; and to do this they gave it out that they 
would put him aboard at Korton; but, instead, they 
spirited him away across the hills to another railroad. 

A few months later Hall was bronght back for 
execution. He was placed in a cage that had two 
cells, and, as he passed the first cell an old freckled 
hand was thrust between the bars to greet him and a 
voice called him by name. Hall stopped in amaze- 
ment; then he burst out laughing; then he struck at 
the pallid face through the bars with his manacles and 
cursed him bitterly; then he laughed again, horribly. 
It was the Red Fox behind the bars on charge of shoot- 
ing the moonshiner's family from ambush — the Red 

283 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

Fox caught in his own toils; and there the two stayed 
in adjoining cells of the same cage. The Red Fox 
sang hymns by day, and had visions by night, which 
he told to the death-watch every morning. In one 
dream that he told me he said he was crossing a river 
in a boat. The wind rose, a storm came, and he barely 
got to land. Wind and wave were his enemies, he 
said; the storm was his trial, and getting to shore 
meant that he was coming out all right. 

The Red Fox's terror of Hall was pathetic. Once 
he wrote to my brother, who was first in command in 
the absence of the captain of the guard: " This man 
iS a Devil and i am a fraid of him he is trying to burn 
the gail down and i wiSli you would take him away." 
But the two stayed together — the one waiting for trial, 
the other for his scaifold, which was building. The 
sound of saw and hammer could be plainly heard 
throughout the jail, but Hall said never a word 
about it. 

He thought he was going to be pardoned, and if not 
pardoned — rescued, surely. He did get a stay of exe- 
cution for a month, and then the rumors of rescue flew 
about in earnest, and the guard came up from the Gap 
in full force and cut port-holes in the court-house walls, 
and drilled twice a day and put out sentinels at night. 
The town was practically under military law, and the 

284 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 

times were tender. By day we would see suspicious 
characters watching us from the spurs round about, 
and hear very queer noises at niglit. The senses of 
the young guards got so acute because of the strain, 
that one swore that he heard a cat walking over the 
sand a hundred yards away. Another was backed into 
town one dark night by an old cow that refused to 
halt, when challenged. Another picket let off his gun 
by accident just before day, and the men sprang from 
their blankets on the court-house floor and were at the 
windows and port-holes like lightning. Two who 
waited to dress, were discharged next morning. One 
night there was a lively discussion when the captain 
gave strict orders that the pickets must fire as soon 
as they saw the mob, in order to alarm the guard in 
town, and not wait until they were personally safe. 
This meant the sacrifice of that particular picket, and 
there was serious question as to the right of the captain 
to give orders like that. And that night as I passed 
through the room where the infant of the guard was 
waiting to go on picket duty on a lonely road at mid- 
night, I heard him threshing around in his bed, and 
he called to me in the manner of a farewell : 

" I — I — I've made up my mind to shoot," he said ; 
and so had everybody else. Whether a thing happens 
or not makes little difference as far as the interest of 

285 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

it is concerned, when one is convinced that it is going 
to happen and looking for it to take place any minute ; 
at least, waiting out on a lonely road under the stars, 
alone, for a band of " wild jayhawkers from old Kane- 
tuck " to come sweeping down on the town was quite 
enough to keep the pickets awake and alert. One 
night we thought trouble was sure, and, indeed, serious 
trouble almost came, but not the trouble we were ex- 
pecting. A lawyer brought the news that two bands 
of Kentuckians had crossed Black Mountain that morn- 
ing to fire the town at both ends and dynamite the 
court-house and the jail. As there were only fifteen 
of us on hand, we telegraphed speedily to the Gap for 
the rest of the guard, and an engine and a caboose 
were sent down for them from Norton, six miles away. 
The engineer was angry at having extra work to do, and 
when he started from the Gap with the guard, he 
pulled his throttle wide open. The road was new and 
rough, and the caboose ran off the track while going 
through a tunnel; ran along the ties for several hun- 
dred yards and ran across sixty feet of trestle, striking 
a girder of the bridge and splitting it for two yards 
or more. A guard managed to struggle out of the 
door and fire off his Winchester just there, and the 
engineer, hearing it, pulled up within ten yards of a 
sharp curve. The delay of ten seconds in the report 

286 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 

of the gun, and the caboose, with the thirt^'-five oc- 
cupants, would have been hurled down an embank- 
ment and into the river. The Kentuckians did not 
come in that night, and thereafter the guard stayed at 
the connty-seat in full force until the day set for the 
execution. 

Apparently the purpose of a rescue was given up, 
but we could not tell, and one morning there was con- 
siderable excitement when John Rawn, the strong 
friend of the condemned man, rode into town and up 
to the jail, and boldly asked permission to see Hall. 
Rawn was the man to whom Hall was looking for 
rescue. He was a tall, straight fellow with blond hair 
and keen blue eyes. The two had been comrades in 
the war, and Hall had been Rawn's faithful ally in his 
many private troubles. Two of us were detailed to be 
on hand at the meeting, and I was one of the two. 
Hall came to the cell-door, and the men grasped hands 
and looked at each other for a full minute without 
saying a word. The eyes of both filled. 

'' Of course, Talt," he said, finally, " I want the law 
to take its course. I don't want to do anything against 
the law and I know you don't want me to." I looked 
for a sly quiver of an eyelid after this speech, but 
Rawn seemed sincere, and Hall, I thought, dropped, 
as though some prop had suddenly been knocked 

287 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

from under him. He looked down quickly, but he 
mumbled : 

" Yes, of course, that's right, I reckon. We don't 
want to do nothing agin the law." ^ 

Still, he never believed he was going to hang, nor 
did he give up hope even on the morning of his execu- 
tion when the last refusal to interfere came in from the 
Governor — the chance of rescue still was left. The 
preachers had been coming in to sing and pray with 
him, and a priest finally arrived; for, strange to say, 
Hall was a Catholic — the only one I ever saw in the 
mountains. Occasionally, too, there had come his 
sister, a tall, spare woman dressed in black; and she 
could hardly look at a member of the guard except with 
the bitterest open hatred. All these besought Hall to 
repent, and, in time, he did; but his sincerity was 
doubtful. Once, for instance, in a lull between the 
hymns, and after Hall had forgiven his enemies, 
the infant, who was on the death-watch, passed near 
the prisoner's cell-door, and Hall's hand shot through 
the bars and the tips of his fingers brushed the butt 
of the boy's pistol, which protruded from a holster on 
his hip. 

" Not this time, Talt," he said, springing away. 

" I was only foolin', " Talt said, but his eyes 
gleamed. 

288 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 

Again, the iiiglit before, being on guard down be- 
hind the jail, I heard Hall cursing because the guards 
would give him no wdiiskey. This was cruel, for the 
reason that they had been allowing him liquor until 
that night, when he was most in need of it. As soon 
as I was relieved, I got a bottle of whiskey and told 
the watch to let him have it. Hall was grateful, and 
next morning he called me by my first name. 

'" I love you," he said, " but I've got you spotted." 
He had repeatedly sworn that he would have many 
of us ambushed, after his death, and his sister was sup- 
posed to have our names and descriptions of us, and an 
old Kentucky mountaineer told me that he would 
rather have the ten worst men in the mountains his 
deadly enemies than that one woman. Hall meant 
that he had me on his list. As ambush would be very 
easy on our trips to and from the county-seat, through 
thick laurel and rhododendron, I told the priest of 
Hall's threat and suggested that he might save us 
trouble by getting Hall to announce in his confession 
that he w^anted nothing else done. The priest said he 
w^ould try. But for a little while on the morning of 
the execution, Hall, for the first time, gave up and 
got very humble ; and there w^as one pathetic incident. 
The sister w^as crouched at the cell-door, and Hall, too, 
was crouched on the floor, talking to her through the 

289 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

bars. They spoke in a low tone, but were not permitted 
to whisper. At last Ilall asked that he might give his 
sister a secret message. It had nothing to do with the 
guard, or the law, or his escape, but he did not want it 
heard. The " Judge," who was on guard, was tender- 
hearted, but a martinet withal, and he felt obliged to 
deny the request. And then Hall haltingly asked 
aloud that his sister should bring a silk handkerchief 
and tie it around his throat — afterward— to hide the 
red mark of the rope. Tears sprang to the '' Judge's " 
eyes, and he coughed quickly and pulled out his own 
handkerchief to blow his nose. It happened to be of 
silk, and, a moment later, I saw him pressing the hand- 
kerchief into the woman's hands. An hour later Hall 
said that he was ready to confess. 



Ill 

No wonder the crowd was eager. Would he tell all? 
How, when he was only fourteen years old, he had shot 
Harry Maggard, his uncle, during the war — Hall de- 
nied this; how he had killed his two brothers-in-law 
— one was alive. Hall said, and he had been tried for 
killing the other and had come clear; how he had killed 
Henry Monk in the presence of Monk's wife at a wild- 

290 




m^s 



Hall stood as motionless as the trunk of an oak. 



The Hanging of Talton Hall 

bee tree — he claimed to have been cleared for that; 
how he had killed a Kentucky sheriff by dropping to 
the groiuid when the sheriff fired, in this way dodging 
the bullet and then shooting the officer from where he 
lay, supposedly dead — that, Hall said, was a lie; how 
he had taken Mack Hall's life in the Wright-Jones 
feud — Mack, he said, had waylaid and wounded him 
first ; how he had thrown John Adams out of the court- 
house window at Prestonburg, over in Kentucky, and 
broken his neck — Adams was drunk, Hall said, and 
fell out ; why he had killed Abe Little- — because, said 
Hall, he resisted arrest; how and where he killed Red- 
necked Johnson, who was found out in the woods one 
morning a week after he had disappeared; whether 
he had killed Frank Salycrs, whose wife he afterward 
married; and the many other mysteries that he might 
clear up if he would speak. Would he tell all? No 
wonder the crowd was still. 

Hall stood motionless, and his eyes slowly wandered 
around at the waiting people — in the trees, on the roofs, 
and on the fence — and he sank slowly back to his 
chair again. Again a murmur rose. Maybe he was 
too weak to stand and talk — perhaps he was going to 
talk from his chair; yes, he was leaning for\vard now 
and his lips were opening. He was looking downward 
into the uplooking face of a big, red-cheeked fellow, 

291 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

and he was surely going to speak. The crowd became 
still again. And he did speak. 

" What's yo' name? " he asked. The fellow told 
him — he had been an unimportant witness in the trial 
— neither for nor against Hall. 

" I thought so," said Hall, and of his own accord he 
turned away from the w^indow and that was all that 
the man with the charge of two-score murders on his 
soul had to say to the world before he left it to be 
judged for them, as he firmly believed, by a living 
God. A little later the line of guards wheeled again 
to face the crowded fence, and Hall started for the 
scaffold. He kissed my brother's hand in the jail, and 
when old Doc came to his cell-door to tell him good-by. 
Hall put his face to the w^indow and kissed his bitterest 
enemy — the man who had brought him to his death. 
Then he went out with a firm step; but his face was 
dispirited and hopeless at last; it looked the face of a 
man who has just been relieved from some long-en- 
dured physical pain that has left him weak in body and 
spirit. Twenty of us had been assigned by lot to duty 
as a special guard inside the box, and all of us, at his 
request, shook one of his helpless hands, which were 
tied behind his back. When he had mounted the scaf- 
fold, he called for his sister, and the tall, thin, black 
spectre came in and mounted the scaffold, too, stopping 

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The Hanging of Talton Hall 

on the step below liim. Hall did not call her by name 
— he hardly looked at her, nor did he tell her good-by 
again. 

" Been enongh killin' on my account," he said, 
abruptly; " I don't want nothin' more done about this. 
I don't want no more lives lost on account o' me. I 
want things to stop right here." 

The woman waved a threatening hand over us, and 
her voice rose in a wail. " Oh, Talt, I can't let this 
rest here. You'd just as well take up one o' these men 
right here and hang 'em. I ain't goin' to let it stop 
here — no — no ! " And she began to cry and ran down 
the steps and out of the box. 

Hall stood as motionless as the trunk of an oak. A 
man will show nervousness with a twitch of the lips, 
a roll of the eyes, or, if in no other way, with his hands ; 
but I was just behind him, and not a finger of his 
bound hands moved. The sheriff was a very tender- 
hearted man and a very nervous one; and the arrange- 
ments for the execution were awkward. Two upright 
beams had to be knocked from under the trap-door, 
so that it would rest on the short rope-noose that had 
to be cut before the door would fall. As each of these 
was knocked out, the door sank an inch, and the sus- 
pense was horrible. The poor wretch must have 
thought that each stroke was the one that was to send 

293 



Blue-grass and Rhododendron 

him to eternity, bu.t not a muscle moved. All was 
ready, at last, and the sheriff cried, in a loud voice : 

" May God have mercy on this poor man's soul ! " 
and struck the rope with a common hatchet. The 
black-capped apparition shot down, and the sheriff ran, 
weeping, out of the door of the box. 

So far no revenge has been taken for the hanging 
of Talton Hall. The mountaineer never forgets, and 
he hates as long as he remembers, but it is probable 
that no trouble will ever come of it unless some promi- 
nent member of that guard should chance, some day, 
to wander carelessly into the little creek to which the 
rough two-horse wagon followed by relatives and 
friends, mounted and on foot, bore the remains of the 
first victim of law and order in the extreme southwest 
corner of the commonwealth of Virginia. 



294 



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